Music 

Lib. 

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eo  Ornstein 


THE     Mi^^N  —  HIS     IDEAS  —  HIS      WORK 


By     FREDERICK     H  .     MARTENS 


BREITKOPF  &  H ARTEL.  Inc..  NEW  YORK 


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LEO  ORNSTEIN 


THE  MAN— HIS  IDEAS 
HIS  WORK 


BY 


FREDERICK  H.   MARTENS 


BREITKOPF  &  HARTEL,  Inc. 
NEW  YORK 


Copyright,    1918, 

By    BRBITKOPF   &   HARTEL,   Inc. 

New   York. 


MUSIC 
tIBRARY 


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97/^  Mb 


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TO   HIS  FRIEND 

A.  Walter  Kramer, 

THE  FIRST  IN  THIS  COUNTRY  TO  RECOGNIZE 

LEO  ORNSTEIN's    MUSICAL   MESSAGE, 

AND    IN    WORD   AND   DEED   A    CONSISTENT   DEFENDER 

OF  INDIVIDUAL  LIBERTY  OF  MUSICAL  EXPRESSION, 

THE  FOLLOWING  PAGES  ARE  DEDICATED 

BY   THE   AUTHOR. 


Leo  Okxsteix 


Preface 


EO  ORNSTEIN  to  many  represents  an  evil  mu- 
sical genius  wandering  without  the  utmost  pale 
of  tonal  orthodoxy,  in  a  weird  No-Man's  Land 
haunted  with  tortuous  sound,  with  wails  of 
futuristic  despair,  with  cubist  shrieks  and  post-impres- 
sionistic cries  and  crashes.  He  is  the  great  anarch,  the 
iconoclast,  the  destructive  genius  who  would  root  out  what 
little  remains  of  the  law  and  the  prophets  since  Scriabin, 
Stravinsky  and  Schonberg  have  trampled  them  underfoot. 
His  earlier  compositions  which,  with  happy  fancy  and  con- 
siderable skill,  exploit  the  possibilities  of  the  diatonic  sys- 
tem he  has  since  abandoned,  are  regarded  much  as  would 
be  the  Sunday-school  certificates  of  an  apostate  to  Satan- 
ism, the  lisped  prayers  of  one  who  has  forgotten  them  to 
celebrate  a  Devil's  mass.  His  gospel  is  black  heresy,  his 
dispensation  a  delusion  and  a  snare !  It  is  thus  that  the 
more  rigid  upholders  of  tradition,  those  who  scorn  taking 
the  pains  to  master  the  idiom  which  serves  to  express  his 
ideas,  see  him. 

The  attitude  of  the  more  formalistic  musician  and 
music-lover  toward  Ornstein's  music,  however,  is  largely 
a  matter  of  aesthetic  point  of  view,  and  aesthetic  points 
of  view  are  not  built  upon  the  rock  of  infallibiHty,  but 
on  the  shifting  sands  of  contemporary  disquisition.  Those 
who  understand  Ornstein's  tonal  language — and  their 
number  is  increasing — are  as  enthusiastic  in  their  admi- 
ration of  his  accomplishment  as  his  detractors  are  scorn- 
ful of  its  value  and  significance. 

It  is  not  the  mere  fact  that  the  writer  is  a  friend  of 


6  PREFACE 

Ornstein,  that  he  has  an  acquaintance  at  first  hand  with 
the  composer's  aims  and  aspirations,  that  the  latter  has 
played  much  of  his  music  for  him  under  intimately  favor- 
able conditions  which  has  prompted  the  following  pages, 
but  the  conviction  that  a  study  of  the  man,  his  ideas  and 
his  work  would  be  of  value  in  correcting  false  impressions 
regarding  the  composer,  his  ideals  and  their  practical 
expression. 

In  this  connection  the  writer,  in  addition  to  the  val- 
uable information  given  him  by  Mr.  Ornstein  himself, 
has  drawn  largely  on  all  material  available  in  the  shape 
of  articles,  interviews,  critiques  et  al,  and  has  endeav- 
ored to  give  credit  where  credit  is  due. 

Frederick  H.  Martens. 


THE  MAN 

Of  course,  those  that  dislike  him,  the 
music  that  he  plays,  and  the  stir  that 
he  makes  in  what  should  be  a  tranquil, 
elderly  world,  will  call  him  insincere. 
For  to  he  certain  of  the  motives  and 
mental  processes  of  those  whom  we  dis- 
like has  long  been  one  of  the  exalted 
prerogatives  of  our  common  humanity. 

H.  T.  Parker. 


^ 


THE   MAN 

OME  account  of  the  life  of  a  creative  artist  would 
seem  a  logical  prelude  to  a  consideration  of  his 
ideas  and  their  creative  development.  And  par- 
ticularly so  in  the  case  of  Leo  Ornstein,  the 
circumstances  of  whose  life  and  the  influence  of  whose 
surroundings  are  so  vividly  reflected  in  the  music  he  has 
written.  Ornstein  has  put  so  much  of  his  own  emotional 
and  impressional  life  and  the  life  of  his  time  into  his 
creative  work,  that  the  story  of  his  twenty-two  years  of 
existence — he  was  born  in  Kremenchug,  a  town  of  south- 
west Russia,  December  11,  1895 — explains  and  in  some 
degree  motives  his  artistic  activities,  opens  up  vistas  of 
understanding  and  appreciation  for  them,  and  establishes 
the  connection  between  his  life  itself  and  his  life-work 
up  to  the  present  time — for  the  composer  cannot,  as  yet, 
be  said  to  have  reached  the  full  plenitude  of  his  powers. 

Ornstein's  recollections  of  his  childhood  are  vivid. 
Kremenchug,  an  important  commercial  town  of  nearly 
sixty  thousand  inhabitants,  is  situated  on  the  Dnieper 
river  in  a  flat,  dreary  countryside,  and  before  the  war  was 
the  centre  of  the  tallow  trade  with  Warsaw.  The  gov- 
ernment of  Poltava,  in  which  it  lies,  was  included  within 
the  pale  of  settlement  first  established  in  1791,  bj'^  which 
a  great  Jewish  population  was  held  down  in  a  congestion 
which  worked  terrible  destitution  and  misery,  and  reduced 
them  to  a  condition  of  abject  poverty  and  despair. 

Though  no  doubt  subconsciously  influenced  by  his 
environment,  the  boy  led  the  ordinarily  happy  life  of  all 
children.      He   speaks   with    affection    of   the   old   wooden 


10  Leo    Ornstein 

house  in  which  he  grew  up,  built  round  a  court  with  a 
well  in  the  centre,  and  of  the  daily  joy  of  bathing  with 
the  companions  of  his  own  age  in  the  Dnieper  during  the 
hot  days  of  the  short  Russian  summer.  He  was  not  more 
than  three  years  old  when  he  began  to  study  music,  en- 
couraged and  taught  by  his  father,  a  rabbi,  who  himself 
had  acquired  fame  as  a  synagogal  cantor  when  only 
eighteen.  Unlike  some  hapless  children  whose  musical 
talent  is  developed  along  the  lines  laid  down  by  the  origi- 
nators of  pate-de-fois-gras,  he  was  not  driven  to  consume 
ceaseless  hours  in  practice.  On  the  contrary,  so  eager 
was  he  to  make  progress  that  he  would  beat  his  older 
brother  with  his  little  fists  in  order  to  drive  him  from  the 
piano  when  he  thought  the  latter  had  pre-empted  it  overlong. 
And  when  no  more  than  five  he  not  only  played  on  the 
piano  a  Russian  folk-song  which  he  had  heard  sung  for 
the  first  time,  but  also  followed  it  up  with  a  series  of  im- 
provised variations  of  his  own.  Although  his  father  was 
opposed  to  his  studying  music  as  a  profession,  his  brother- 
in-law,  M.  Titiev,  a  violinist,  overcame  his  opposition, 
and  as  a  result  the  lad  was  taught  the  elements  and  put 
through  a  thorough  course  of  scales  and  five-finger  exer- 
cises, Kuhlau,  Clementi,  and  the  easier  compositions  of 
Bach  and  Handel. 

Josef  Hofifman  came  to  Kremenchug  in  1903,  and  young 
Ornstein  played  for  him,  was  praised  and  received  a  let- 
ter recommending  him  to  the  Petrograd  Conservatory. 
Some  time  later  the  boy  sought  out  Vladimir  Puchalski 
(composer  of  a  Little- Russian  Fantasy  for  orchestra,  an 
opera,  and  an  attractive  octave  study  well  known  to  pian- 
ists), played  for  him  and  was  accepted  as  a  pupil  at  the 
Imperial  School  of  Music  at  Kiev,  of  which  Puchalski 
was  the  director. 

The  death  of  an  aunt,  however,  interfered  with  his 
plans   of   study  at   Kiev.     He  was   obliged  to   return   to 


The    Man  11 

Kremenchug  and  work  with  local  teachers.  Gabrilowitch, 
who  gave  a  concert  there  in  1903,  also  heard  him  play, 
and  gave  him  a  letter  to  Alexander  Siloti,  at  the  Moscow 
Conservatory.  But  the  boy  had  not  as  yet  made  up  his 
mind  definitely  where  and  with  whom  to  study.  Merely 
to  gain  self-confidence  (Ornstein,  even  yet,  is  far  more 
diffident  than  he  is  supposed  to  be),  he  took  an  entrance 
examination  for  the  Conservatory  of  Poltova,  and  de- 
camped as  soon  as  he  was  offered  a  scholarship.  Mean- 
while his  father  had  reached  a  decision  for  him.  He  was 
to  go  to  Petrograd  (1904).  Before  he  went,  he  enjoyed 
his  first  real  contact  with  native  music  at  an  old-fash- 
ioned provincial  wedding,  at  which  a  wealthy  merchant 
celebrated  the  nuptials  of  his  daughter  with  a  week  of 
dancing  and  festivity.  Balalaika  orchestras  and  folk-song 
choruses  were  a  feature  of  the  affair  and  woke  that  inter- 
est in  Russian  folk-song  which  has  since  been  reflected  in 
the  composer's  earlier  Russian  Suite  for  piano,  the  Russian 
Impressions  for  violin  and  piano  and,  more  recently,  in 
new  Russian  songs  and  his  choruses.  At  Petrograd  Leo 
played,  not  without  tremors,  for  Alexander  Glazounov, 
director  of  the  Conservatory,  and  was  at  once  accepted 
as  a  pupil.  At  the  test  he  gave  an  unconscious  exhibition 
of  his  possession  of  "perfect  pitch."  The  piano,  though 
not  out  of  tune,  had  been  tuned  a  half-tone  lower  than 
ordinary,  and  the  boy  of  eight,  sensitive  to  the  change, 
transposed  at  sight  the  pieces  by  Bach  and  Mozart  given 
him  to  play.  Glazounov  was  interested,  and  had  him  play 
three-part  inventions  of  Bach  blindfold,  and  tell  him  the 
names  of  the  chords. 

But  this  initial  success  did  not  console  the  lonely  and 
homesick  boy  when  his  father  left  him  alone  in  the  metro- 
politan city,  cut  off  from  all  who  were  dear  to  him  and 
plunged  suddenly  into  a  new  and  strange  mode  of  life. 
Yet  there  was  much  to  hold  his  attention  and  interest,  and 


12  Leo   Ornstein 

in  the  course  of  time  he  reconciled  himself  to  the  change. 
He  practised  three  hours  a  day;  studied  theory  and  har- 
mony with  Medemi  (though  Mme.  Essipoff  had  expressed 
a  wish  to  teach  him)  ;  attended  all  rehearsals  and  concerts 
of  the  Conservatory  orchestra,  directed  by  Glazounov, 
where  he  became  acquainted  with  the  works  of  Mous- 
sorgsky  (Zimbalist,  the  violinist,  was  a  member  of  the 
graduating  class  at  the  time)  ;  frequented  the  opera,  the 
ballet,  concerts  and  recitals,  and  drank  in  music  generally 
at  every  pore. 

An  abiding  musical  influence,  which  afterward  made 
itself  felt  largely  in  his  compositions,  was  the  Oriental 
chant,  which  he  had  absorbed  as  a  child  in  the  South. 
In  Petrograd  he  learned  to  know  the  ritual  music  of  the 
Greek  and  Armenian  Churches,  semi-oriental  in  char- 
acter, and  regularly  attended  the  services  in  the  great 
Russian  cathedrals,  so  fascinated  was  he  with  these  ritual 
chants.  His  work  bears  eloquent  testimony  to  the  fact 
that  these  impressions  were  of  a  lasting  nature. 

His  marked  talent  soon  made  him  a  favorite  of  those 
aristocratic  salons  of  Petrograd  where  music  was  culti- 
vated, and  he  was  spoiled  and  petted  to  a  degree  by  the 
music-loving  society  of  the  Russian  capital.  He  might 
easily,  in  the  course  of  a  few  years,  have  become  a  kind 
of  immature  Henselt,  persona  grata  at  the  Imperial  Court 
and  with  nobiliary  circles,  producing  elegant  and  finely 
chiseled  salon  music,  uniting  the  Lisztian  sonority  and 
Hummelian  smoothness  of  his  predecessor,  and  oblivious 
of  the  sterner  and  truer  message  of  realism  and  individ- 
uality that  was  in  him  to  deliver.  Yet  the  same  sinister 
influences  which,  subconsciously,  perhaps,  had  shadowed 
his  childhood  in  Kremenchug  were  to  be  emphasized  and 
strengthened  by  other  impressions  of  terror,  and  of  the 
undying  struggle  of  the  down-trodden  for  freedom  from 
tyranny,  which  found  a  quasi-humorous  reflex  in  a  strike 


The    Man  13 

of  the  Conservatory  pupils.  The  boy  was  an  eye-witness 
and  very  nearly  a  victim  of  the  Russian  revolution  of 
1905.  While  attending  his  classes  at  the  Conservatory 
(at  which  a  general  as  well  as  a  purely  musical  course 
was  prescribed)  young  Ornstein  was  earning  a  living  by 
coaching  aspiring  singers  in  operatic  roles.  Thus  he  came 
lo  know  much  of  the  standard  repertory — A'ida,  Faust, 
Onegin,  Mefistofile,  Samson  and  Delilah,  etc. — and  a  ludi- 
crous incident  in  this  connection  was  the  appearance  one 
day  of  a  large  man  of  more  than  thirty-five  interrupting 
his  prospective  teacher  of  twelve  in  a  snowball  fight  in 
order  to  take  his  lessons.  This  existence  of  work  and 
study,  and  of  keen  absorption  of  all  that  literature  found 
to  offer  an  opening  mind — since  before  he  was  twelve 
years  old  the  boy  had  begun  to  devour  Tolstoy,  Andreyev, 
Chekov,  as  well  as  Shakespeare,  Balzac  and  other  non- 
Russian  classics  in  translation — was  rudely  interrupted  by 
the  revolutionary  cataclysm. 

Day  after  day,  on  his  way  to  and  from  the  Conserva- 
tory, he  saw  the  street  fighting  that  reigned,  would  rush 
into  the  narrow  alleys  between  the  houses  when  the  cry 
of  "Cosaki,  Cosaki!"  rose,  and  the  wild  horsemen  charged 
down  the  avenues,  shooting  and  sabering  indiscriminately 
all  who  came  in  their  way,  whether  revolters  who  had 
been  singing  the  Internationale,  or  innocent  passersby. 
He  saw  the  slaughter  on  the  Admiralty  Square,  and  on 
one  occasion,  when  a  Cossack  charge  went  thundering 
down  the  street  as  he  was  hastening  to  the  Conservatory 
with  his  roll  of  music,  was  thrust  into  a  dry-goods  shop 
in  the  nick  of  time,  and  had  to  remain  there  fourteen  hours 
before  it  was  safe  to  venture  forth.  On  a  precocious 
child,  acutely  sensitive  and  receptive,  and  with  an  intel- 
lectual grasp  and  emotional  development  beyond  his  years, 
all  this  could  hardly  have  failed  to  make  a  lasting  im- 
pression, one  whose  motive  recurs  again  and  again  in  his 


14  Leo   Ornstein 

music.  Much  in  his  Suite  des  Gnomes,  for  instance,  though 
its  programmatic  appHcation  is  to  humanity  at  large 
rather  than  to  any  one  of  its  racial  segments,  owes  its 
origin  to  his  recollections  of  this  period  of  his  life. 

For,  to  add  to  the  danger  threatening  the  boy,  cast 
on  his  own  resources  in  a  city  in  plain  revolution,  the 
revolutionary  terrorists  were  countered  by  the  terrorists 
of  reaction  who,  under  the  name  of  "The  Union  of  the 
Russian  People,"  began  a  crusade  of  extermination  against 
the  elements  supposed  to  be  hostile  to  the  autocratic 
regime.  Their  "black  hundreds"  directed  their  attacks 
especially  against  the  Jews  and — the  boy  was  of  that  race! 
His  father  and  family  (themselves  implicated  in  revolu- 
tionary propaganda,  for  Ornstein  has  told  the  writer  of 
hidden  stores  of  arms  and  ammunition  held  in  reserve 
against  a  possible  pogrom  in  Kremenchug)  became  alarmed. 
Leo  was  taken  from  Petrograd  to  Kremenchug  and  thence, 
soon  after,  the  entire  family  fled  to  this  country,  arriving 
here  in  1907. 

Once  more  the  boy  underwent  the  experiences  of  a 
complete  transition.  Fresh  from  his  Petrograd  expe- 
riences, he  came  from  the  most  autocratic  of  empires  to 
the  most  liberal  of  republics.  As  Rosenfeld  says :  "Prob- 
ably the  luckiest  thing  that  happened  to  young  Ornstein 
was  the  flight  of  his  family  from  Kremenchug  that  trans- 
formed him  during  the  formative  period  of  his  life  from 
the  pianist  infant-prodigy  of  Petrograd  society  into  the 
boy  of  a  dense  and  livid  slum."  On  the  lower  East  Side, 
in  Attorney  Street,  Leo  Ornstein  gradually  sloughed  his 
Russian  skin  and  became  an  American  boy.  He  went  to 
school,  he  practised — for  he  had  no  intention  of  giving  up 
his  music— he  played  with  other  boys  in  the  block.  And 
he  attended  the  Institute  of  Musical  Art,  where  he  had 
been  given  a  scholarship,  and  also  the  Friends'  Seminary. 
At  the  Institute  he  had  occasional  difficulties.     A  lad  of 


The    Man  15 

his  exceptional  maturity  of  mind  and  quick  intellectual 
grasp  was  naturally  impatient  of  year-long  harmony  and 
theory  courses  along  the  traditional  lines;  he  questioned 
authority,  he  kicked  against  the  pricks  instead  of  defer- 
ring to  them.  But  he  graduated  in  due  time  and  is  now, 
no  doubt,  more  tolerant  in  retrospect  as  regards  possible 
differences  of  opinion  he  may  have  had  with  his  teachers 
in  harmony  and  theory,  Dr.  Percy  Goetschius  and  R. 
Huntington  Woodman.  During  this  time  he  was  an  inde- 
fatigable worker.  He  rose  at  five  in  the  morning,  and  the 
old  cobbler  living  beneath  him  once  told  him  he  was  the 
only  one  in  the  house  to  get  to  work  before  he  did.  He 
toiled  at  his  piano  and  at  composition,  and  amid  the  con- 
strained and  depressing  conditions  of  his  external  exist- 
ence, the  misery,  gloom  and  unhappiness  which  he  saw 
about  him  on  every  side,  he  found  his  consolation  in  work. 
And  here  again,  as  in  the  case  of  his  revolutionary  im- 
pressions, his  emotions  were  later  to  be  woven  into  the 
very  texture  of  his  music.  When  he  found  his  own  idiom, 
when  he  had  mastered  the  tonal  language  necessary  to 
express  what  he  felt,  "it  was  the  voice  of  the  city  prole- 
tariat, that  pierced,  raucous  and  dissonant,  but  with  a 
primeval  starkness  that  left  no  suspicion  of  the  sentimen- 
tally sordid,  into  European  music." 

At  the  New  York  Conservatory,  Ornstein  was  the 
piano  pupil  of  the  late  Mrs.  Bertha  Feiring  Tapper,  her- 
self a  musician  of  rare  gifts  and  sympathetic  insight,  and 
a  pupil  of  Svendsen  and  Agatha  Backer-Grondal.  He  had 
already  begun  to  study  with  another  instructor  when 
Mrs.  Tapper  first  heard  him  play,  and  remarked  that  she 
wished  she  had  a  boy  of  such  talent  to  teach.  The  teacher 
who  had  him  in  charge  did  not  appreciate  Ornstein's  pos- 
sibilities. He  told  Mrs.  Tapper  that  she  was  welcome  to 
him,  and  thus  he  became  her  pupil.  Of  this  "guide, 
philosopher  and  friend,"  rather  than  mere  teacher,  Ornstein 


16  Leo    Ornstein 

invariably  speaks  with  reverence  and  affection.  She  was 
unwearied  in  his  training,  not  alone  in  a  purely  musical 
sense,  but  in  her  cultivation  of  his  mind  along  broader 
educational  lines.  The  composer  acknowledges  her  as  the 
greatest  individual  influence  in  his  career.  Dr.  Tapper 
was  as  much  interested  as  was  his  wife  in  the  boy's  devel- 
opment, and  for  several  successive  summers  he  spent  two 
months  with  them  at  Blue  Hills,  Me.,  devoting  himself 
principally  to  technical  work.  These  summer  months 
were  the  brightest  spots  of  his  year.  Here,  in  addition  to 
his  technical  practise,  he  worked  at  Haydn  and  Mozart 
sonatas.  Bach  and  Beethoven,  and  laid  a  foundation  of 
appreciation  for  the  classics  before  coming  in  touch  with 
the  works  of  the  modernist  composers.  Here  he  would 
listen  to  Franz  Kneisel  and  Mrs.  Tapper  play  sonatas,  and 
at  Dr.  Horatio  Parker's  cottage  heard  most  of  Mono 
played  by  the  composer  from  MS. 

In  the  spring  of  1910  Mrs.  Tapper  took  her  pupil  with 
her  to  Europe.  This  first  visit  to  the  Continent  was  a 
comparatively  brief  one.  Leo  heard  Saint-Saens'  Samson 
et  Dalila  at  the  Paris  Opera,  attended  various  concerts, 
the  playing  of  the  late  Raoul  Pugno  in  particular  making 
a  deep  impression  on  him,  and  encountered  modern  music 
for  the  first  time  in  the  shape  of  the  Cesar  Franck  Sonata 
for  violin  and  piano.  A  taste  of  mountain  climbing  in  the 
Austrian  Tyrol,  a  visit  to  Vienna,  where  Leschetiszky 
played  Chopin  and  Schumann  for  him,  attendance  at  the 
Salzburg  Festival,  where  he  heard  Mozart's  Don  Giovanni, 
with  Lehmann  and  Geraldine  Farrar,  and  a  stay  at  Dres- 
den, where  he  played  symphonies  for  four  hands  and  in 
this  way  became  acquainted  with  those  of  Brahms, 
in  his  opinion  "superior  to  Beethoven's,"  are  its  salient 
points.  From  Dresden  he  returned  to  New  York  and 
gave  his  first  public  concert  in  that  city  at  the  New  Am- 
sterdam Theatre,  March  5,  1911.    He  had  a  large  audience 


The    Man  17 

and  his  renderings  of  Bach's  Chromatic  Fantasy  and  Fugue, 
Beethoven's  Sonata  Appassionata,  some  Chopin  numbers 
and  Rubinstein's  D  Minor  Concerto,  with  accompaniment 
of  orchestra,  were  well  received.  Arthur  Brisbane,  in  an 
editorial  in  the  New  York  Evening  Journal  (June  11,  1910) 
had  already  spoken  prophetically  of  the  extraordinary 
promise  displayed  by  the  pianist  in  a  concert  given  by  the 
Institute  of  Musical  Art  in  Mendelssohn  Hall  a  few  days 
before,  and  paid  a  deserved  tribute  of  appreciation  to  his 
teacher.*  He  said  in  part:  "We  believe  that  this  boy, 
providentially  saved  from  Russia,  brought  up  in  the  pov- 
erty of  a  great  city,  will  stand  with  the  great  musicians 
of  the  world,  on  a  par  with  the  greatest  interpreters  of 
musical  genius  and  perhaps  among  the  greatest  musical 
creators !" 

His  promising  first  appearance,  succeeded  by  concerts 
in  Philadelphia  and  elsewhere,  was,  however,  only  an  inci- 
dent in  a  very  busy  life  of  study,  a  kind  of  foretaste  of 
what  the  future  might  bring.  Ornstein  continued  to  study 
with  Mrs.  Tapper,  and  after  his  graduation  from  the  Insti- 
tute of  Musical  Art  began  to  work  con  amore  at  compo- 
sition. But  in  the  spring  of  1913  he  found  his  true  idiom 
of  expression  for  the  first  time,  the  one  in  which  he  has 
since  written  almost  exclusively,  with  only  occasional  re- 
turns to  his  earlier  manner.  As  he  has  described  it  to 
the  writer,  this  new  idiom  was  the  outcome  of  a  sudden 
mental  illumination.  Without  any  previous  intimation  he 
found  that  he  had  at  last  discovered  ways  and  means  to 
express  his  innermost  emotions  in  tone,  unfettered  by  any 
rule   which  might  do   violence   to   his   individual   concept. 


*  "Years  of  patient  teaching-,  ceaseless  encouragement  and  protection 
Mrs.  Tapper  has  given  tliis  boy,  whose  power  she  was  the  first  to  see — 
long  hours,  days  and  months  of  patient,  kind  correction  and  explana- 
tion—and  all  for  no  other  reward  than  the  pleasure  of  seeing  the  lad, 
poor  and  friendless  at  first,  take  his  right  place  in  the  field  of  accom- 
plishment." 


Mrs.  Thomas  Tapper 


The    Man  19 

For  weeks  he  lived  in  a  daze,  experimenting  with,  testing 
and  perfecting  the  details  of  his  new  expressional  mode, 
and,  once  its  principles  established  in  his  mind,  wrote  his 
entire  Dwarf  Suite  in  a  single  day.  When  he  first  played 
his  Wild  Men's  Dance  for  Mrs.  Tapper  she  thought  he 
had  lost  his  mental  self-control,  and  it  was  not  until  after 
repeated  performances  that  she  recognized  the  principle  un- 
derlying its  music.  With  all  this  leaven  of  new  ideas  and 
ideals  fermenting  within  him  it  seemed  that  another  Euro- 
pean trip,  which  would  bring  him  in  closer  touch  with 
modern  thought  and  endeavor,  might  be  valuable  for  the 
development  of  the  youthful  pianist  and  composer. 

Hence,  in  the  summer  of  1913,  Ornstein  once  more 
crossed  the  ocean  in  company  with  Mrs.  Tapper  and  went 
directly  to  Paris.  It  was  here  that  the  sudden  and  over- 
whelming projection  of  Notre-Dame  on  his  consciousness 
had  such  an  effect  on  the  composer  that  it  evoked  the  two 
Impressions  which  bear  its  name.  For  three  weeks  after 
he  had  set  them  down  on  paper  the  composer  had  no 
chance  to  play  them.  It  was  not  until  he  found  himself 
in  Switzerland,  whose  scenic  beauties  inspired  another  set 
of  Quatre  Impressions  de  la  Suisse,  for  four  hands,  and 
where  he  wrote  a  quartet  and  a  quintet  for  strings,  that 
he  had  an  opportunity  of  playing  them.  From  Switzer- 
land he  went  to  Vienna,  where  he  first  realized  that,  aside 
from  his  earlier,  more  conventional  style  and  his  new  man- 
ner, he  was  in  addition  the  possessor  of  a  third,  and  began 
the  "Vannin"  Waltsers  and  The  Night.  In  Vienna  he 
heard  Der  Rosenkavalier,  and  here  Leschetiszky  confessed 
that  he  could  not  at  first  believe  the  Wild  Men's  Dance  had 
been  seriously  "written  out"  as  it  stood,  and  was  not  a 
species  of  musical  hoax.  In  Berlin,  which  he  also  visited, 
Ornstein  made  the  acquaintance  of  Ferruccio  Busoni, 
whom  he  admires  as  "a  great  intellect  in  music,"  and  thence 
went   to    Norway,   practising   where   he   could,    composing 


20  Leo   Ornstein 

on  trains,  and  making  his  debut  in  Christiania  as  a  concert 
pianist  with  a  group  of  Chopin  pieces  and  the  Liszt  E  Flat 
Major  Concerto.  He  also,  for  the  first  time,  played  some 
of  his  own  newer  compositions  and  drew  from  critics  the 
statements  that  "it  was  amazing  that  Mr.  Ornstein  should 
have  decided  to  play  a  little  joke  on  the  public  and  trans- 
fer it  from  the  concert  hall  to  the  dental  parlor,"  and  that 
he  was  "a  young  man  temporarily  insane."  Though  those 
who  condemn  mountain  climbing  may  regard  the  fact  as 
a  corroboration  of  the  last-mentioned  statement,  it  might 
be  mentioned  that  while  in  Norway  the  composer  ascended 
the  Gaudepeggyn,  the  highest  peak  in  the  country. 

From  Christiania  Ornstein  turned  to  Denmark,  and  in 
Copenhagen  gave  his  more  than  conventionally  attractive 
Russian  Suite  and  Cossack  Impressions  for  piano  to  the 
Danish  publisher,  Wm.  Hansen.  And  thence  he  went  to 
Paris  (Mrs.  Tapper  had  returned  to  America  while  he 
was  still  in  Norway),  to  meet  Harold  Bauer.  This  visit 
to  Paris  marked  an  epoch  in  Ornstein's  career.  He  was 
at  last  to  be  taken  seriously,  by  competent  judges,  as  a 
composer  with  a  new  and  important  message  to  deliver, 
one  which  deserved  hearing,  irrespective  of  whether  he 
might  be  acclaimed  or  condemned. 

As  is  but  natural  under  these  circumstances,  Ornstein's 
experiences  in  Paris  are  dear  to  him.  In  telling  the  writer 
about  them,  he  has  dwelt  on  his  interesting  musical  dis- 
cussions with  Bauer,  who,  with  all  the  good  will  in  the 
world,  could  not  "see"  his  music,  but  gave  him  introduc- 
tions which  opened  the  Paris  world  of  music  to  him.  It 
was  through  Bauer  that  he  met  Walter  Morse  Rumniel, 
who  gave  him  a  letter  to  the  famous  critic  Calvocoressi. 

Ornstein's  own  account  of  their  first  meeting  and  its 
results  is  not  without  interest:  "I  went  with  my  letter 
to  Calvocoressi's  apartment;  he  had  a  suite  of  rooms 
some  three  flights  up  in  the  Rue  de  Caroussell,  and  a  blind 


The    Man  21 

woman — his  mother — opened  the  door  in  answer  to  my 
ring.  I  was  ushered  into  his  studio,  a  pleasant  room,  its 
walls  covered  with  books  and  pictures,  with  a  grand  piano 
littered  with  manuscripts,  and  a  tall  dark  man,  with  a 
slight  stoop,  rose  from  his  desk  to  receive  me.  He  had  a 
gentle  voice  and  sympathetic  manner  and,  after  reading 
my  letter,  asked  me  in  Russian — and  it  was  a  great  pleas- 
ure to  hear  the  accents  of  my  mother-tongue  again — 
whether  I  composed  or  merely  played  modern  music.  I 
told  him  that  I  took  the  liberty  of  doing  both,  and  he  at 
once  had  me  sit  down  at  the  piano.  I  played  my  Wild 
Men's  Dance  and  the  two  Impressions  for  him,  and  he 
seemed  amazed  and  unwilling  to  believe  that  the  former 
could  have  originated  in  New  York  City.  He  insisted 
that  I  return  the  next  day  and  play  it  again  for  him  and 
for  some  musicians  whom  he  expected  to  invite.  And 
thenceforward  his  kindness  and  interest  were  unfailing. 
He  secured  various  wealthy  pupils  for  me — for  I  was 
stranded — to  coach  in  song  and  opera,  and  thus  I  was  able 
to  make  a  living  without  giving  over  my  composition. 
Though  I  was  too  busy  with  my  lessons  and  work  to  meet 
many  people,  I  made  the  acquaintance  of  the  Roumanian 
Princess  de  Brancovan  and  the  gifted  music-lover  and 
musician,  Mme.  Landsberg — she  sang  very  well — wife  of 
the  Brazilian  banker  of  the  same  name,  to  each  of  whom 
I  ascribed  one  of  my  Preludes,  and  for  both  of  whom  I 
played ;  as  well  as  the  American-born  Princess  de  Polignac, 
who  has  taken  such  an  interest  in  Stravinsky's  music,  and 
at  whose  musicales  I  also  appeared. 

"During  February  and  IMarch  of  1914  Calvocoressi 
gave  a  series  of  lecture-recitals,  two  of  them  devoted  to 
the  Geographie  Miisicale  de  I'Europe,  with  musical  illus- 
trations drawn  entirely  from  works  of  modernist  com- 
posers. In  the  first  lecture  were  represented  Richard 
Strauss  songs,  piano  pieces  by  Bela  Bartok,  Zoltan  Kodaly, 


22  Leo    Ornstein 

Vilmos-Geza  Zagon,  Serge  Liapounov,  and  Cyril  Scott's 
'Jungle  Book'  pieces,  which  last  I  played.  At  the  second 
lecture-recital  I  played  my  own  Impressions  de  la  Tamise 
and  Danse  Sauvage  and  piano  pieces  (Op.  11  and  19),  by 
Arnold  Schonberg.  Stravinsky's  interesting  Melodies 
Japonaises  were  also  sung  at  this  recital." 

While  thus  occupied  in  Paris,  Ornstein  had  made  the 
acquaintance  of  various  young  Oxfordians,  of  W.  H. 
Osgood  and  of  Mr.  Roger  Quilter,  the  last-named  "a 
quite  wonderful  personality,"  to  quote  his  own  words,  who 
had  heard  him  play  and  grown  enthusiastic  about  his  music. 
These  new  friends  insisted  on  his  making  a  little  vaca- 
tion trip  to  Oxford,  there  to  meet  other  musical  students 
and  musicians,  with  whom  they  were  desirous  he  should 
come  in  touch.  The  experience  promised  to  be  an  inter- 
esting one,  and  Ornstein  yielded  to  the  warm  solicitations 
of  his  well-wishers,  and  to  a  desire  to  know  at  first  hand 
something  of  the  charm  of  the 

"City   of  friends   and   echoes,   ribbons,  music  and  color, 
Lilac  and  blossoming  chestnut,  willows  and  whispering  limes." 

He  went  and  was  given  a  welcome  in  accord  with  Ox- 
ford traditions.  Here  he  met  Robert  Bridges,  the  poet ; 
Balfour  Gardiner,  the  Post-Elgarian  composer,  whose 
symphonic  compositions  include  the  Shepherd's  Fennel 
Dance,  a  symphony  and  the  vigorous  News  from  Wyndah, 
and  who  has  taken  a  particular  interest  in  calling  attention 
to  the  best  modernist  music,  and  Dr.  Ernest  Walker,  direc- 
tor of  music  at  Balliol  College.  The  latter  was  particu- 
larly interested  in  young  Ornstein.  He  made  him  play 
for  him  in  one  of  the  private  rooms  at  Balliol,  and  summed 
up  his  impressions  of  this  new  music  in  a  remark  to 
Gardiner:  'T've  heard  something  strange,  strange — some- 
thing that  makes  me  feel  as  though  all  the  composite  par- 
ticles of  the  world  were  crumbling !"    Its  intellectual  society 


The    Man  23 

and  its  delightful  vernal  surroundings  made  Oxford  a 
source  of  true  inspiration  to  the  composer,  as  it  has  been 
to  many  artists  before  him.  He  spent  a  good  part  of  his 
time  wandering  in  and  out  of  the  rooms  of  the  collegians, 
playing  for  them  and  discussing  music  in  general  and  his 
own  theories  in  particular.  All  was  charmingly  informal, 
stimulating,  suggestive.  And  at  Oxford  Ornstein  found 
the  incentive  to  complete  his  13th  Psalm.  Yet,  though  the 
days  of  his  Oxford  stay  were  drawing  to  a  close,  his  Eng- 
lish friends  were  not  yet  content  to  have  him  return  to  Paris. 
Mr.  Roger  Quilter,  of  whose  amiable  qualities  of  heart 
and  mind  Ornstein  speaks  with  real  appreciation,  insisted 
on  his  coming  to  London.  During  an  evening  at  Quilter's 
home  he  played  for  the  English  composer  and  his  mother 
on  a  fine  Bechstein  and,  after  dinner,  in  the  course  of  a 
discussion  with  a  young  painter  who  happened  in,  his  atten- 
tion was  first  called  to  William  Blake.  What  he  heard 
excited  his  interest  in  the  highest  degree;  he  read  every- 
thing there  was  to  be  had  of  Blake's,  and  pored  over  his 
designs,  notably  those  for  Robert  Blair's  The  Grave  and 
The  Marriage  of  Heaven  and  Hell,  as  well  as  the  splen- 
did series  illustrating  The  Book  of  Job.  His  instant  sym- 
pathy with  the  artist-poet's  ability  to  seize  "the  pictorial 
element  of  ideas,  simple  or  sublime,  and  translate  them 
into  the  appropriate  language  of  sense,"  has  been  reflected 
in  the  tremendous  sonata  for  violin  and  piano.  Op.  31, 
which,  together  with  three  songs,  as  yet  unpublished,  were 
its  first  fruits.  Through  the  kindness  of  Mr.  Quilter, 
Ornstein  made  a  number  of  interesting  acquaintances  while 
in  London,  among  them  Robin  Legge,  of  the  Daily  Tele- 
graph, for  whom  he  played  at  a  tea;  the  great  Sargeant, 
Arthur  Shattuck,  and  Mr.  Winthrop  L.  Rogers,  the  pub- 
li5;her,  a  fine  violinist  and  a  music-lover  keenly  interested 
in  all  new  developments.  And — Ornstein's  first  London 
recital  was  arranged. 


24  Leo    Ornstein 

It  took  place  on  March  37,  1914,  at  Steinway  Hall, 
and  unchained  a  flood  of  derisory  comment.  On  January 
14  of  the  same  year,  Arnold  Schonberg  had  himself  con- 
ducted at  a  Saturday  afternoon  Symphony  Concert  a  per- 
formance of  his  Five  Orchestral  Pieces,  which  had  already 
been  hissed  when  heard  in  the  same  city  in  1912,  and  on 
their  second  hearing  had  secured  a  lukewarm  success 
d'estime.  It  was  declared  that  it  was  completely  impossi- 
ble to  follow  him  in  "his  last' and  really  hideous  negations." 
And  Ornstein's  Sonata,  Op.  35,  Wild  Men's  Dance,  Im- 
pressions of  Notre-Dame  and  of  the  Thames,  Moods, 
Op.  22;  Six  Short  Pieces,  Op.  19,  and  Prelude,  Op.  20, 
No.  2,  were  at  once  declared  "equal  to  the  sum  of  Schon- 
berg and  Scriabin  squared"  (the  fact  that  he  played  a 
group  of  Schonberg  piano  pieces  at  his  recital  gave  point 
to  the  assertion),  and  the  former  were  accused  of  being 
"poor  futurists"  compared  to  their  composer.  One  re- 
viewer painted  the  unhappy  situation  of  the  "poor  critic," 
whose  ears  were  "not  only  assaulted  by  strange  sounds 
defying  any  form  of  classification,  but  who,  robbed  of  road- 
maps  and  sign-posts,  was  to  wander  in  a  new  and  wholly 
unfamiliar  country  without  so  much  as  a  guide-book  to 
assist  him."  The  four  movements  of  his  Sonata  "sounded 
like  four  separate  spasms  of  a  mental  anguish  too  great 
to  be  borne."  Full  tribute,  however,  was  paid  his  gifts 
as  a  pianist  (particularly  in  his  playing  of  Three  Chorales 
by  Bach,  transcribed  by  Busoni)  ;  yet  as  regards  the  im- 
pression made  by  his  own  music,  it  seemed  to  be  the  gen- 
eral opinion  of  the  press  that  "if  the  hallmark  of  greatness 
is  laughter,  Mr.  Ornstein  may  be  hailed  as  a  genius."  The 
critic  of  the  London  Observer  went  even  further.  "We 
have  never  sufifered  from  such  insufiferable  hideousness, 
expressed  in  terms  of  so-called  music."  Yet  even  he 
admitted  that  "the  skill  that  could  devise  the  cacophonous, 
unrhythmic,  unmusical  always,  two-penny  colored  rubbish 


The    Man  35 

which  Leo  Ornstein  drove  with  his  Nasmyth-hammer 
action  into  the  heads  of  a  long-suffering  audience  on  Fri- 
day was  stupendous !" 

•  There  was  significance,  however,  in  the  statement  of 
the  London  Daily  Telegraph  that  though  nothing  in  so 
"advanced"  a  form  had  been  heard  in  London  before,  "yet 
the  audience  remained  to  the  end,  hypnotized  as  a  rabbit 
by  a  snake."  It  was  a  genuine  tribute  to  the  fact  that  in 
this  new  musical  speech,  which  defied  analysis  on  a  first 
hearing  and  was  intelligible  only  to  the  initiate,  there 
dwelt  an  accent  of  truth  and  conviction,  which  in  itself 
held  the  attention  and  precluded  any  denial  of  the  artist's 
sincerity.  The  recital  aroused  great  discussion  and  musi- 
cians of  standing  fell  foul  of  each  other  in  debating  the 
pros  and  cons  of  the  principles  it  had  revealed.  More  or 
less  vague  and  elastic  terms,  such  as  futurism,  cubism, 
post-impressionism  were  generously  used,  all  parties  con- 
cerned, as  is  usual  in  aesthetic  discussions,  proving  their 
cases  with  great  ingenuity  to  their  own  satisfaction.  But 
the  ice  had  been  broken,  Ornstein  had  secured  an  audience 
and  a  future  as  a  concertizing  pianist  doubled  by  a  com- 
poser: one  who,  while  devoting  himself  generally  to  the 
cause  of  modern  music  as  an  interpreting  artist,  would 
also  be  able  to  bring  his  own  musical  message  to  the  atten- 
tion of  the  musical  world.  And,  immediately  after  this 
first  recital,  the  publication  of  the  Preludes,  the  Impres- 
sions de  Notre-Dame,  the  Dwarf  Suite,  the  Impressions  de 
la  Tamise,  the  Wild  Men's  Dance,  Three  Burlesques  and 
the  String  Quartet  was  arranged. 

The  issue  of  various  works  was  to  be  of  great  moment 
to  the  young  composer.  They  afforded  the  serious  musi- 
cian an  opportunity  of  studying  his  artistic  ends  and  aims, 
and  brought  his  music  to  the  attention  of  many  who  had 
not  heard  him  play.  After  his  first  London  recital  Orn- 
stein returned  to  Paris  and  thence,  in  April,  he  went  back 


26  Leo    Ornstein 

to  London  to  play  his  second  recital  there  on  the  7th  of 
the  same  month. 

This  second  recital,  like  its  predecessor,  was  announced 
as  one  of  "Futuristic  Music,"  and  its  program  was  made 
up  entirely  of  the  composer's  own  music,  including  the 
Dwarf  Suite,  two  sets  of  Impressions,  the  Two  Shadow 
Pieces,  Op.  17;  the  Eleven  Short  Pieces,  Op,  29;  the 
Moods,  Preludes  and  Burlesques,  Op.  22,  20  and  30,  and 
the  Wild  Men's  Dance.  Again  "the  majority  of  the  au- 
dience were  inclined  to  treat  the  recital  as  a  joke,"  and 
there  were  hissings  and  cat-calls.  But  there  were  also 
more  to  realize  that  the  new  composer  was  to  be  reckoned 
with  as  a  force,  that  he  was  saying  new  things  in  a 
new  way  because  impelled  by  his  artistic  conscience,  that 
although  setting  at  defiance  existing  harmonic  law,  he  was 
giving  his  auditors  music  which,  to  quote  The  London  Mu- 
sical Standard,  had  "that  germ  of  realism  and  humanity 
which  is  indicative  of  genius  on  the  part  of  its  composer." 

The  composer  himself  was  not  dismayed  by  the  flood 
of  adverse  criticism  which  endeavored  to  belittle  his  work. 
He  knew  that  he  was  giving  sincere  expression  to  his  emo- 
tions in  music,  and  realized  that  an  idiom  as  novel  as  his 
own,  more  direct  than  that  of  Schonberg,  and  (in  spite  of 
analogies)  established  on  altogether  different  principles, 
could  not  find  acceptance  at  a  moment's  notice.  And, 
singularly  free  from  the  vanity  of  small  minds,  he  had  a 
sense  of  humor  which  permitted  him  to  enjoy  a  clever  hit 
at  his  own  expense.  Aside  from  this,  there  was  the  con- 
sciousness that  musicians  of  real  distinction,  men  in  whose 
technical  and  aesthetic  judgment  he  could  place  reliance, 
took  his  art-effort  seriously,  and  though,  in  some  cases, 
their  approval  was  more  or  less  qualified,  regarded  it  as 
worthy  of  the  respect  that  any  new  departure  which  has 
a  real  inner  meaning  and  coherency  deserves,  though  these 
may  not  be  at  once  obviously  apparent. 


The    Man  27 

After  his  second  London  recital  Ornstein  returned  to 
America.  But  before  this  he  had  composed  his  piano 
quintet  and  his  symphonic  poem,  The  Fog.  In  the  United 
States,  upon  his  return,  he  gave  a  series  of  recitals  in  the 
South  and  made  his  way  to  Blue  Hills  in  June.  In  Sep- 
tember it  had  been  his  intention  to  go  to  Norway  to  play 
a  series  of  forty  concerts  in  that  country,  but  the  outbreak 
of  the  European  war  led  to  the  cancellation  of  the  tournee; 
and  he  continued  to  work  at  composition  and  as  a  concert 
pianist  until  January,  1915. 

It  was  during  January  and  February  of  that  year  that  he 
gave  the  now  celebrated  series  of  recitals  at  the  Bandbox 
Theatre,  New  York,  in  which  he  braved  conventional  pro- 
gram-making by  presenting  four  programs  made  up  entirely 
of  ultra-modern  piano  music,  his  own  and  that  of  others. 
Here  were  presented  the  results  of  the  time  and  devotion 
he  had  given  in  Paris  and  London  to  absorbing  the  work 
of  the  most  notable  and  noteworthy  of  its  exponents- — 
he  had  practically  memorized  all  that  Ravel  and  Debussy 
had  written  for  the  instrument.  At  the  first  recital — to 
quote  A.  Walter  Kramer,  "the  modernity  of  the  program 
could  have  been  gauged,  when  it  is  recorded  that  Debussy 
served  as  the  Haydn  of  the  afternoon"- — there  were  heard 
the  D  Minor  Sonata  of  Eric  Korngold,  Maurice  Ravel's 
Sonatina,  Arnold  Schonberg's  Three  Piano  Pieces,  Op.  11 ; 
Albehiz's  Iberia,  Grondahl's  Impromptu  on  a  Negro  Mo- 
tive, Cyril  Scott's  Danse  Negre,  and  the  first  series  of 
Debussy's  Images.  In  addition  the  composer  played  his 
own  Impressions  de  la  Tamise,  his  Wild  Men's  Dance,  and 
his  Improvisata. 

At  the  second  recital  Cesar  Franck's  Prelude,  Chorale 
and  Fugue,  Cyril  Scott's  Impressions  of  the  Jungle,  De- 
bussy's second  series  of  Images,  Schonberg's  Six  Short 
Pieces,  Op.  19,  and  a  tone-poem.  Pan,  by  the  Bohemian 
composer,    Vitezlav    Novak,    according    to    another    critic 


28  Leo   Ornstein 

"served  but  as  hors  d'ociwre  and  dessert  to  the  main  item 
of  the  bill,  which  was  Mr.  Ornstein's  Dwarf  Suite." 

This  last  group  of  numbers  attracted  far  more  atten- 
tion than  any  of  the  other  pieces  on  the  program.  It  was 
received  with  due  respect,  and  some  who  heard  the  com- 
poser's music  for  the  first  time,  while  they  would  not 
commit  themselves  to  approval,  were  fair  enough  to  rec- 
ognize that  a  single  hearing  did  not  justify  criticism  or 
condemnation.  This  recital  and  those  following  filled  the 
small  playhouse  to  overflowing.  The  principal  numbers, 
other  than  the  composer's  own,  represented  in  the  two 
remaining  recitals  were  the  Vincent  d'Indy  Sonata,  Op.  63, 
Gabriel  Grovlez'  three  Impressions  of  London — ah,  so 
different  in  every  respect  from  those  of  Ornstein's  Im- 
pressions de  la  Tamise! — Scriabin's  Sonata  and  his  Four 
Preludes.  Most  of  this  music,  notably  Ravel's  Sonatina, 
and  his  Gaspard  de  la  Nuit  (which  was  also  played),  were 
introduced  to  a  New  York  audience  for  the  first  time.  At 
his  second  recital  Ornstein  played  his  own  Preludes,  Bur- 
lesques and  Moods,  and  at  the  third  the  Two  Shadow 
Pieces  and  his  Impressions  de  Notre-Dame. 

The  Bandbox  Theatre  recitals  not  only  afforded  a  novel 
and  artistically  justifiable  departure  from  program  rou- 
tine, they  also  gave  proof  of  the  intellectual  and  technical 
maturing  of  the  composer  since  his  European  experiences. 
They  firmly  established  his  reputation  as  an  artist  who 
would  have  to  be  taken  seriously  both  as  a  virtuoso  and 
a  creator.  And  they  were  the  prekide  to  numerous  con- 
cert engagements  throughout  the  country,  during  which 
Ornstein  gave  much  attention  to  Chopin  interpretation. 
The  end  of  the  summer  which,  as  usual,  he  had  spent  at 
Blue  Hill,  brought  with  it  a  deep  sorrow  for  the  young 
composer,  the  illness  and  death  of  Mrs.  Tapper,  whose 
interest  and  encouragement  had  been  unfaltering,  and  who 


The    Man  29 

died  in  Boston  in   September,  1915,  with  the  knowledge 
that  her  favorite  pupil  had  justified  her  fondest  hopes. 

The  composer's  sorrow  may  have  been  to  some  degree 
mitigated  by  the  realization  that  he  had  not  been  un- 
faithful to  the  ideals  of  self-expression  and  artistic  hon- 
esty she  had  inculcated.  A  tribute  of  gratitude  and  homage 
to  her  memory  was  the  Chopin-Ravel  recital  given  last 
March  at  the  Princess  Theatre,  New  York,  as  a  contribu- 
tion to  the  Bertha  Feiring  Tapper  Scholarship  Fund,  es- 
tablished by  pupils  and  friends  of  Mrs.  Tapper.  And 
his  choice  of  the  two  composers  represented  was  a  deli- 
cate acknowledgment  of  the  fact  that  in  his  teacher,  to- 
gether with  a  keen  appreciation  of  the  artistic  ideals  of 
the  newer  art,  was  united  love  and  reverence  for  the  beauty 
of  the  old. 

It  was  on  December  15,  1915,  that  Ornstein  gave  an- 
other New  York  recital  at  the  Cort  Theatre.  Here,  in 
addition  to  compositions  of  his  own,  already  played,  he 
presented  the  two  "Vannin"  numbers,  The  VValtzers  and 
At  Night,  and  offset  them  by  Cyril  Scott's  Sonata,  Op.  56; 
the  Ravel  Sonatina  and  his  Oiseaux  Tristes,  Albeniz's 
Almeria  and  Erick  Korngold's  Fairy  Pictures.  In  general 
critics  dwelt  on  the  pianistic  charm  of  his  playing,  the 
subtle  elaboration  of  his  effects  of  tone-shading,  the  per- 
fection of  his  pedal  technic,  the  beauty  of  his  touch,  his 
"ability  to  express  design,"  his  dynamic  control.  Another 
New  York  recital  at  Aeolian  Hall  (January  23,  1916)  was 
well-nigh  the  concert  sensation  of  the  season.  Here  he 
skilfully  heightened  the  effect  of  his  "modernistic  shockers" 
— such  things  as  the  Marche  Grotesque  and  Funeral  March 
of  the  Dzvarfs — to  use  the  phrase  of  an  exasperated  audi- 
tor, by  throwing  them  into  high  relief  with  the  interposi- 
tion of  pieces  by  Bach,  Schumann,  Liszt  and  Rubinstein, 
which  he  played  with  true  romantic  feeling  and  intimacy. 

In  February,   March  and  April  of  the  same  year  the 


30  Leo    Ornstein 

composer  gave  a  series  of  four  "Informal  Recitals"  in  New 
York,  at  the  residence  of  Mrs.  Arthur  M.  Reis,  in  which 
he  ran  the  gamut  of  ultra-modern  piano  music.  At  the 
first  the  pieces  de  resistance  were  Scriabin's  Sonata, 
Op.  23 ;  two  Preludes  and  Cesar  Franck's  Prelude,  Chorale 
et  Fugue,  besides  Preludes  and  an  Etude  by  the  first-named 
composer ;  Tzvo  Chorales  by  Moussorgsky,  a,  or  rather  the, 
Liszt  Liebestraum,  the  Rubinstein  Valse  Caprice  and  a 
whole  group  of  Debussy — Prelude,  the  First  Arabesque, 
Jardins  sous  la  Pluie  and  L'Isle  Joyeuse.  At  the  second 
he  played  the  D'Indy  Sonata,  a  Debussy  group — Hommage 
a  Rameau,  Et  la  lune  descend  sur  le  temple  qui  fut,  and 
Poissons  d'Or,  the  Schonberg  pieces,  Op.  11;  Novak's 
The  Sea,  and,  by  Ravel,  the  lovely  Pavane,  and  the  set  of 
three  Miroirs.  The  third  program  introduced  novelties 
of  his  own  as  a  second  group' — Mclancholie,  Danse  Arahc 
and  A  la  Chinoise,  as  w^ell  as  the  Dwarf  Suite — preceded 
by  Scriabin  Preludes,  a  Pocme  and  Guirlandes,  and  a 
Busoni  Sonatina,  and  followed  by  Ravel's  powerful  Gas- 
pard  de  la  Nuit.  The  concluding  program  of  the  series 
was  devoted  to  the  Novi  Pezzi,  by  Casella;  Busoni's 
Elegien,  Cyril  Scott's  Dance  of  the  Elephants,  a  group 
of  six  titulate  Preludes  by  Debussy,  the  composer's  own 
Sonata,  Op.  25  (written  during  1914),  Ravel's  Valses 
Nobles  et  Sentimentales,  some  Stravinsky  piano  pieces  and 
his  own  new  composition,  The  Masqueraders. 

The  aim  of  these  unconventional  programs  was  to 
illustrate  the  actual  process  of  divergence  by  which  piano- 
forte composition  had  moved  away  from  the  art- forms 
of  the  romantic  composers  to  find  its  present  contempo- 
rary mode  of  expression.  They  were  programs  of  devel- 
opment intended  to  establish  the  relation  and  inner  logic 
of  what  to  many  would  seem  to  represent  only  radically 
unmotived  departures  from  the  accepted  norms.  The 
composer  took  part  in  an  informal  discussion  after  each 


The    Man  31 

recital — a  possibility,  since  the  attendance  at  the  series 
was  limited  to  an  audience  of  some  fifty  professionals  and 
music-lovers. 

The  summer  of  1916  the  composer  spent  at  Deer  Isle, 
Maine,  composing,  practising  and  reading  proof  on  vari- 
ous of  his  compositions  in  press  at  the  time.  His  work 
as  a  concert  pianist  during  the  winter  of  1916  and  the 
spring  of  1917  may  be  said  to  have  placed  him  well  within 
the  rank  of  contemporary  piano  virtuosi,  and  shows  be- 
yond possibility  of  doubt  his  perfected  mastery  of  the  key- 
board and  his  increasing  reputation  as  a  shining  luminary 
among  the  elect  of  ultra-modern  composition. 

The  summer  of  1917  he  is  again  spending  at  Deer  Isle, 
Maine,  where  he  finds  the  absolute  quiet  he  needs  for  his 
work  and  reading.  He  is  an  omnivorous  reader  and  de- 
clares that  he  is  "thoroughly  unhappy"  unless  he  gets  a 
certain  amount  of  real  reading  done  in  the  course  of  every 
twenty-four  hours — modern  literature,  modern  history, 
political  economy  in  its  latest  phases — for  Ornstein  is  not 
only  a  modernist  in  music !  And  there  we  may  leave  him 
while  we  attempt  to  outline  his  philosophy  of  music,  the 
motives  and  incentives  which  lead  him  to  think  and  to 
write  music  as  he  does,  the  ideas  that  underlie  his  whole 
creative  effort  and  give  it  the  individual  note  which  dis- 
tinguishes it  from  that  of  his  contemporaries  in  the  field 
of  ultra-modern  composition. 


HIS  IDEAS 
Leo  Ornstein  may  be  ahead  of  his 
time.  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  he 
is  ushering  in  a  new  epoch;  that  he  is 
employing  his  genius  toward  the  attain- 
ment of  a  new  musical  expression — an 
expression  which,  perhaps  not  perma- 
nent in  itself,  must  play  an  important 
role  in  the  development  of  the  music 
of  years  to  come.  .  .  .  His  music  is 
color — for  that  is  the  basis  on  which 
he  builds. 

A.  Walter  Kramer. 


mm 


II. 

HIS   IDEAS 

HE  word  "ideas"  is  a  term  capable  of  many  defi- 
nitions. In  speaking  of  the  ideas  of  Leo  Orn- 
stein  we  are  dealing  with  formative  ideas — not 
mere  images  or  transcripts,  but  types  of  ideals. 
They  represent,  in  music,  his  conception  of  what  is  from 
his  individual  standpoint  as  a  creating  artist  supremely 
excellent  or  desirable.  And,  like  all  new  ideas  or  ideals 
which,  since  the  beginning  of  time,  have  come  into  con- 
flict with  other  ideas  or  ideals  already  established  and 
more  or  less  crystallized  as  dogma,  they  have  aroused 
much  antagonism  and  resentment  on  the  one  hand,  while 
finding  enthusiastic  support  on  the  other. 

We  have  in  music  a  whole  vocabulary  of  words  which 
are  employed  to  summarize,  more  or  less  clearly,  the 
departures  made  during  the  last  fifteen  or  sixteen  years 
from  the  theories  of  the  past.  We  speak  of  "modernism" 
and  "ultra-modernism,"  of  "realism"  (verismo),  of  "im- 
pressionism" and  "post-impressionism,"  of  "pointillism," 
of  "cubism"  and  "futurism."  Ornstein  has,  at  one  time 
or  another,  and  by  one  or  another  critic,  been  classed  as 
an  exponent  of  nearly  every  one  of  these  newer  trends 
of  musical  development.  Of  all  these  terms,  the  expres- 
sion "futurist"  has  been,  perhaps,  most  improperly  used 
in  connection  with  the  composer.  "Futurism,"  in  a  more 
contemporary  sense,  epitomizes  the  aims  of  the  Italian 
and  French  artists  who,  rejecting  all  convention  and 
technic,  employ  imitative  megaphonic  instruments  to 
"express  the  geometric  and  mechanical  splendor  of  nu- 
merical  sensibility"   in   sound.      And   with   this   recondite 


36  Leo   Ornstein 

aim  Ornstein  has  nothing  in  common.  As  he  himself 
says:  "Futurism  is  not  even  a  name  to  me.  If  my  music 
becomes  more  generally  understood  at  some  future  time, 
perhaps,  from  that  point  of  view  it  might  be  called  futur- 
istic music.  All  that  I  am  attempting  to  do  is  to  express 
myself  as  honestly  and  convincingly  as  I  can  in  the 
present." 

Here  w^e  have  a  direct  summing  up  of  Ornstein's  own 
ideas  and  ideals — self-expression,  sincere  and  without  con- 
ditions. In  the  development  of  what  he  regards  as  his 
more  truly  "idiomatic"  works,  it  is  true  that,  like  Schon- 
berg  and  Satie,  he  has  thrown  overboard  traditional  form 
and  the  diatonic  centre,  concentrating  on  color  and 
rhythm ;  yet  harmonic  principles  underlie  all  his  sonal 
combinations.  It  is  their  application,  novel  even  to 
the  ear  accustomed  to  Scriabine  and  Ravel  which,  like 
everything  that  is  new  in  the  sense  of  being  difficult  to 
establish  by  analogy  with  that  which  has  gone  before, 
defers  a  more  general  and  immediate  appreciation  of  his 
music.  It  represents,  as  Charles  L.  Buchanan  says,  "tech- 
nically speaking,  nothing  more  or  less  than  an  acute  inten- 
sification of  the  harmonic  sense  of  music."  All  that  the 
composer  has  written  in  what  may  be  called  his  "second 
manner"  (wherein  might  be  included  the  "Vannin"  pieces, 
digressing,  yet  akin  to  it),  reflects  his  fundamental  belief 
that  "music  must  primarily  be  felt,  not  analyzed." 

Many  of  those  who  are  not  in  sympathy  with  Ornstein's 
ideals  have  denied  their  validity  by  decrying  the  compo- 
ser's artistic  honesty.  Frederick  Corder*  declares  that, 
"finding  the  production  of  sheer  nonsense  both  easy  and 
profitable,  Schonberg  actually  had  followers  in  the  persons 
of  Bela  Bartok  and  Leo  Ornstein,  .  .  .  but  the  produc- 
tions of  Ornstein  and  Bartok  were  mere  ordure;    it  was 


•  "On  the  Cult  of  Wrong  Notes,"  by  Frederick  Corder.     The  Musical 
Quarterly,  July,  1915. 


His    Ideas  37 

impossible  for  a  musical  person  to  tolerate,  much  less 
pretend  to  admire  them."  To  question  the  sincerity  of 
what  we  do  not  understand,  or  do  not  wish  to  understand, 
may  be  natural,  yet  it  hardly  deserves  to  be  called  criti- 
cism, at  least  not  in  a  constructive  sense.  And  how  may 
we  expect  sympathy  or  even  intelligent  interest  in  any 
newer  art  development  from  one  who  speaks  of  "the  crazy 
crowd  of  whom  Claude  Debussy  is  the  chief"  and  who, 
in  surveying  the  progress  of  music  during  the  nineteenth 
century,  adds :  "In  England,  finally,  our  dull  time,  in 
which  Bennett  and  Macfarren  afforded  a  feeble  illumina- 
tion, was  followed  by  a  generation  which  included  Parry, 
Mackenzie,  Stanford,  Cowen  and  myself?  One  cannot  say 
we  flourished,  but  we  were  graciously  endured  for  a  while ; 
till  Holbrooke,  Cyril  Scott  and  a  raw  band  of  amateurs" 
(we  presume  it  included  such  men  as  Elgar,  Granville, 
Bantock,  Arnold  Bax,  Balfour  Gardiner,  John  Ireland, 
Ralph  Vaughn  Williams,  and  the  like)  "found  more  favor 
in  the  eyes  of  the  critics."  Mr.  Corder  was  born  in  1852. 
Charles  L.  Buchanan  is  a  critic  of  a  different  type. 
In  a  serious  study*  he  speaks  of  Ornstein  as  possessing 
"to  a  large  extent  that  indefinable  clairvoyant  quality  that 
is  present  in  all  vital  art,"  yet  expresses  the  fear  that  Orn- 
stein's  music  shows  tendencies  which  seem  to  him  to  be 
dangerously  in  the  direction  of  an  exclusive  preoccupation 
with  mood  at  the  expense  of  thought."  And  he  puts  the 
question,  "Can  a  substantial,  authentic  musical  message 
proclaim  itself  through  a  medium  essentially  suggestive 
rather  than  definite?"  Perhaps  the  best  answer  to  this 
question  has,  tmconsciously,  been  given  in  advance  by  Paul 
L.    Rosenfeld.**      In    discussing    the    movement    entitled 


*  "Futurist  Music,"   by  Cliarlcs  L.  Buclianan.    The  Independent,  July 
31,  1916. 

•♦  "Ornstein,"  by   Paul   L.   Rosenfeld.     The  New  Republic,  May  27, 
1916. 


38  Leo    Ornstein 

Love,  in  the  piano  sonata,  Op.  25,  Mr.  Rosenfeld  says: 
"It  tells  its  tale:  it  is  silent;  and  while  one  speculates 
whether  it  is  music  or  not,  one  discovers  that  he  has  heard 
real  episodes  out  of  the  life  of  the  composer,  and  perhaps 
through  him,  episodes  out  of  the  lives  of  a  whole  upgrow- 
ing  generation." 

It  is  true  that  Ornstein's  "ultra-modernist"  music  is 
pure  emotion  in  tone,  selfial  and  social,  contemplative  and 
aesthetic;  it  is  mood  precipitated  in  sound,  according  to 
an  instinctive  underlying  law  and  theorem  which  the  com- 
poser himself  has  not  as  yet  entirely  formulated  and,  per- 
haps, never  will.  Whether  this  music  conveys  thought  more 
directly  through  an  accepted  symbolism  of  expression,  or 
suggests  thought  indirectly  through  sheer  emotional  evoca- 
tion, is,  after  all,  negligible  so  long  as  its  message  wins 
through  to  those  to  whom  it  is  addressed.  And  more  and 
more  are  coming  to  understand  it. 

Nor  is  Ornstein  a  pedant,  one  who  has  neatly  labeled 
his  "ideas,"  and  aspires  to  the  chieftainship  of  some  neo- 
musical  tribe  on  the  strength  of  them.  He  objects  to  classi- 
fications and  "schools"  of  musical  creative  endeavor.  Every 
individual  should  try  to  solve  the  psychic  problems  of  the 
material  himself — to  penetrate  into  every  material  manifes- 
tation of  life,  and  know  its  soul.  "Bach  and  Cesar  Franck 
are  to  me  the  two  greatest  musicians,  because  they,  above  all 
others,  lift  the  veil  of  the  material  and  disclose  its  essen- 
tial soul."  Ornstein  gives  his  message  for  what  it  is  worth 
to  those  who  care  to  hear  it.  This  message,  in  the  opin- 
ion of  some,  is  one  altogether  fraught  with  gloom  and 
despair.  There  has  been  a  cry  against  Ornstein  because 
of  his  unmerciful  sincerity,  because  he  has  not  wrapped 
his  emotions  in  the  cloak  of  convention.  Even  a  com- 
poser like  Bloch  has  accused  Ornstein  of  "writing  music 
that  was  too  sad  and  melancholy,"  missing  the  whole 
point  at  issue,  that  Ornstein  invariably  writes  as  he  feels, 


His    Ideas  39 

and  that  when  he  feels  deeply  he  cannot  convey  his  feel- 
ings in  weak  and  anaemic  sentimentalities,  draped  in  all 
sorts  of  diatonic  reticences,  but  gives  them  as  they  are — 
in  all  their  pathos  and  poignancy,  naked  and  unashamed. 
Nor  are  all  his  moods  tragic  ones,  all  his  tonal  landscapes 
overgrown  with  the  cypress  and  the  yew — there  is  ample 
published  evidence  to  the  contrary.  But  when  he  does 
write  in  the  tragic  vein,  it  is  in  accord  with  his  theory 
that  by  the  expression  of  deep  grief  the  soul  becomes 
purified  and  gains  the  illumination  of  true  beauty. 

As  has  been  mentioned,  he  found  himself,  after  he 
had  written  much  music  in  the  major-minor  system,  em- 
ploying traditional  forms,  at  a  serious  loss  to  express  in 
music  those  deeper  and  more  intimate  emotions  and  reac- 
tions within  him  which  clamored  for  utterance.  And  then, 
after  unhappy  weeks  of  hopelessness  and  disorientation, 
of  groping  and  experiment,  it  came  to  him  with  over- 
whelming suddenness — that  he  had  discovered  the  alpha- 
bet of  a  new  tongue,  a  tonal  language  which  enabled  him 
to  give  his  inspiration  the  freest  rein  in  sound  expression. 
The  firstling  of  the  new  dispensation  was  the  initial  chord 
of  what  is  now  The  Funeral  March  of  the  Dwarves. 
Then  came  The  Wild  Men's  Dance  and  the  Dwarf  Suite ; 
and  in  these  compositions,  each  conceived  and  carried  out 
at  a  white  heat  without  interruption,  we  have  all  the  out- 
ward and  visible  signs  of  the  new  inward  and  spiritual 
grace  which  the  composer  had  found,  and  which  he  per- 
fected in  their  successors.  The  composer's  own  explana- 
tion of  the  extreme  radicalism  of  his  music,  which  differen- 
tiated from  all  other,  the  primary  reason  for  its  intensely 
individual  note  is  interesting.  "When  I  began  to  compose, 
I  had  practically  not  been  influenced  by  any  current  music." 
The  only  modern  compositions  which  Ornstein  had  actually 
seen  when  he  began  to  write  in  his  second  manner  were 
Dubussy's  Reflets  dans  I'eau  and  a  Rhapsody  by  Max  Reger. 


Funeral  March 


His    Ideas  41 

The  pieces  already  mentioned  (The  Wild  Men's  Dance 
and  the  Dwarf  Suite)  may  be  taken  to  illustrate  Ornstein's 
method  of  composition.  Like  practically  all  that  he  has 
done,  they  were  written  at  one  sitting,  to  stand  or  fall  as 
first  set  down.  Ornstein  never  composes  "at  the  piano." 
His  whole  intricate  and  complex  harmonic  and  rhythmic 
scheme  is  developed  in  his  mind,  and  often  he  dare  lose 
no  time  in  setting  it  down  on  paper  before  its  outlines 
grow  dim.  Many  of  his  compositions  are  programmatic; 
yet  he  often  hesitates  to  give  them  too  definite  a  title, 
since  "to  others  my  piece  may  suggest  something  entirely 
different  from  the  picture  or  mood  I  had  in  mind  when 
writing  it ;  and  their  imaginings  may  be  quite  as  appro- 
priate and  legitimate  as  the  one  I  had  intended.  I  am 
even  free  to  say  that  I  have  heard  certain  interpretations 
of  my  compositions  by  other  pianists,  which  struck  me 
as  being  more  fine  and  effective  than  my  own  conception 
of  the  same  pieces."  And  not  infrequently  the  composer 
destroys  what  he  has  written,  for  he  is  a  severe  self-critic 
and  does  not  think  it  worth  while  preserving  anything 
that  seems  below  the  standards  he  has  set  himself. 

To  return  to  The  Wild  Men's  Dance,  A  la  Chinoise 
and  the  Dwarf  Suite,  which  so  admirably  typify  Ornstein's 
ideas  of  composition.  In  them  the  diatonic  system,  the 
tonic  and  dominant  idea  of  chord  relationship  is  entirely 
abandoned.  A  subtle  musical  intuition  seems  to  prompt 
their  extremely  plastic  resolutions,  which  are  the  reflec- 
tion of  a  logic  of  emotion — if  one  may  so  call  it — rather 
than  of  mathematical  design.  Here  we  have  the  direct 
antithesis  of  Schonberg,  between  whom  and  Ornstein  it 
is  possible  to  draw  some  analogies — Ornstein's  harmonies 
are  the  natural  and  unalloyed  result  of  his  unfettered 
creative  impulse,  innocent  of  any  preconceived  theory  ; 
Schonberg,  on  the  other  hand,  works  in  accord  with  an 
abstruse  and  mysterious  musical  calculus  known  only  to 


42 


Leo   Ornstein 


himself.  For  Ornstein  there  exist  no  actual  chords  or  dis- 
cords. His  chord  combinations  are  not  the  conscious  re- 
Hexion  of  a  definite  theoretic  basis,  but  the  outcome  of 
the  impulse  for  a  richer,  fuller  tonal  coloring,  one  which 
extends  the  possibilities  of  pure  harmony  far  beyond  the 
limits  of  the  diatonic  system. 

And,  as  the  illustrations  following  will  show,  his 
chordal  resolutions  "are  not  dictated  by  mere  technical 
formulcc,  but  by  the  purpose  of  the  thought  and  the  inten- 
sity of  the  mood  they  seek  to  establish."     Thus  in  Triste: 


^ 


^ 


» 


i 


W 


tE& 


^=Y» 


5* 


H 


^ 


^ 


REFLECTIVE    MOOD 


we  have  a  chord  resolved  according  to  the  elemental  or 
rather  emotional,  logic  which  the  mood  development  dic- 
tates.     In 


TRAGIC    MOOD 


His    Ideas  43 

we  have  an  altogether  different  resolution  of  the  same 
chord,  again  compelled  by  mood  instead  of  the  accepted 
laws  of  modulation,  "This  principle" — that  of  emotional 
logic — is,  according  to  Ornstein,  "if  not  my  only,  at  any 
rate  my  supreme  reason  for  resolving  certain  chords  into 
others  as  I  do.  The  resolution  is  the  outcome  of  the 
image,  color  scheme,  design,  etc.,  that  I  try  to  project 
in  my  composition." 

And  the  composer  is  frank  in  saying  of  his  "second 
manner"  of  musical  speech :  "I  honestly  find  this  the  most 
logical  and  direct  idiom  through  which  to  express  my 
musical  impulse,  thought  and  feeling.  I  cannot  help  con- 
trasting it  with  one  representing  a  compromise  with  tra- 
ditional formulas  which  often  react  unfavorably  on  my 
spontaneity  of  inspiration.  I  find  that  existing  tonal  idioms 
do  not  allow  me  the  perfect  expression  of  all  that  I  wish 
to  say  musically.  And  I  have  had  to  find  a  language  of 
my  own.  Yet  I  feel  that,  once  its  underlying  basis  is 
understood,  this  language  will  be  listened  to,  and  my 
work  will  be  clear  to  many  who  do  not  grasp  its  meaning 
now." 

The  composer  adds :  "I  have  my  diatonic  and  lyric 
moments,  and  on  occasion  I  employ  the  diatonic  scale  for 
the  simple  reason  that  my  own  radical  medium  does  not 
suit  the  purpose  of  what  I  want  to  say."  This  does  not 
apply  to  his  earlier  works  alone,  the  Serenade,  Op.  5,  No.  1, 
and  Scherzino,  Op.  5,  No.  2 ;  Russian  Suite,  Cossack  Im- 
pressions, Six  Lyric  Pieces,  Miniatures  and  others,  which 
antedate  his  later  manner.  There  are  moods  perhaps  less 
intimate  in  a  personal  way;  there  are  emotions  less  com- 
plex; there  are  impressions  whose  simple  lucidness  does 
not  seem  to  call  for  the  richer  chromaticism  and  more 
varied  and  intricate  tonal  weave  which  is  Ornstein's  very 
own.  The  Sonata  for  violin  and  piano.  Op.  26,  makes 
this  clear,  as  do  some  of  the  songs.     In  this,  as  in  all  else 


44  Leo   Ornstein 

he  does,  Ornstein  is  entirely '  honest.  He  writes  in  his 
two  manners  at  will,  according  to  whichever  best  lends 
itself  to  his  purposes  at  the  moment. 

Ornstein's  genuine  gifts  have  secured,  and  have  con- 
tinued to  secure,  acceptance  and  publicity  for  anything 
and  everything  he  chooses  to  write  along  "major  and 
minor"  lines.  Yet,  even  in  a  utilitarian  way,  his  faith 
in  himself  and  his  more  radical  ideals  has  already  been 
justified  by  the  increasing  success  of  his  more  intimate 
and  emotionally  advanced  musical  works.  He  still  makes 
occasional  excursions  into  the  diatonic  field,  but  it  is  only 
when  he  feels  the  direct  impulse  that  he  reverts  to  it,  and 
when  this  is  the  case  he  invariably  produces  something 
worth  while. 

As  he  puts  it :  "There  are  moments  when  only  a  purely 
diatonic  idiom  will  serve  to  express  my  ideas.  Nothing 
irritates  me  more  than  to  have  a  composer  claim  the 
modernity  of  his  music  as  a  virtue.  A  statement  of  the 
kind  is  rank  heresy,  since  the  sincere  composer  does  not 
choose  a  medium — the  medium  chooses  him.  He  is  com- 
pelled to  use  it.  If  I  had  found  it  possible  to  express  all 
that  I  thought  and  felt  diatonically,  I  should  not  have 
had  to  resort  to  the  'radical'  idiom  which  those  who  do 
not  understand  it  condemn.  Can  you  imagine  The  Wild 
Men's  Dance  and  other  things  of  mine  expressed  in  the 
tonality  of  B  major?" 

At  the  same  time  the  composer's  "diatonic  moments" 
are  not  his  only  lyric  ones.  He  has  written  much  music 
essentially  lyric  in  his  later  manner — the  Sonata  for  vio- 
lin and  piano.  Op.  26 ;  the  Arabesques,  the  Poems  of  1^17 
and  the  Sonata  for  'cello  and  piano,  Op.  45.  "It  is  when 
I  am  in  search  of  softer  and  gentler  color  effects  that  I 
resort  to  the  use  of  the  diatonic  scale." 

Nor,  even  in  his  own  more  intimate  expressional  mode, 
does  he  lose  his  sense  of  proportion.     As  he  says:    "I  do 


His    Ideas 


45 


compromise  to  the  degree  that  in  writing  for  the  piano 
I  realize  its  limitations,  as  I  realize  their  limitations  when 
writing  for  the  voice  or  for  the  strings.  These  limitations 
I  accept — for  the  artist  must  have  a  perfect  understand- 
ing of  his  material — and  without  due  regard  for  them 
my  music  cannot  penetrate  the  listener  so  that  he  is  able 
to  judge  as  to  the  validity  of  my  creative  impulse." 

The  erroneous  impression  prevails  that,  more  or  less, 
Ornstein's  later  piano  music  is  difficult  with  a  difficulty 
quite  beyond  the  limitations  of  the  instrument.  Yet — once 
understood — as  he  says :  "My  piano  music  is  as  easy  to 
play  and  memorize  as  that  of  Liszt.  My  pianoforte  Sonata, 
for  example,  is  no  more  exacting  than  Liszt's  Don  Juan 
fantasy.  The  'note  clusters'  which  I  use  and  whose  use 
has  been  reprehended,  represent  a  perfectly  logical  antici- 
pation of  overtones."  Ornstein,  when  he  told  the  writer 
this,  off'ered  the  following  illustration  from  his  Sonata, 
Op.  31: 


plu. 


to  prove  that  his  anticipation  of  the  overtones,  by  actual 
playing,  enabled  him  to  secure  a  certain  depth  of  tone 
and  an  effect  of  "clouded  sonority"  which  it  was  impos- 


46  Leo    Ornstein 

bible  to  realize  in  any  other  way.  "If  you  were  to  strip 
the  color  elements  from  one  of  my  chords,  you  would 
find  its  actual  structure  one  of  Grecian  severity  of  out- 
line. But  it  requires  study  to  distinguish  between  the 
fundamental  tones  and  those  purely  incidental." 

Form  may  be  said  to  be  viewed  by  Ornstein  some- 
what in  the  nature  of  a  collection  of  building  laws  which 
he  regards  only  when  they  serve  his  conveniience.  The 
camp  of  the  Roman  legion  was  invariably  laid  out  in  the 
same  manner,  whether  in  Persia  or  Pannonia;  but  the 
legion  of  Ornstein's  notes  must  camp  as  their  originator  list- 
eth,  and  not  according  to  the  time-honored  laws  of  mu- 
sical engineering  tactics.  Ornstein  does  not  run  his 
inspiration  into  molds,  but  allows  it  to  shape  its  flow  as 
it  must  and  will,  and  this  makes  its  form  entirely  sub- 
ordinate to  its  own  impulse.  This  is  noticeable  in  many 
of  the  shorter  compositions,  but  we  may  take  the  sonata 
form  as  an  example  of  his  whole  attitude  toward  the 
architecture  of  music.  He  does  not  see  in  the  sonata  a 
preconceived  mold  or  casing  into  which  his  inspiration 
must  be  wedged.  He  recognizes  a  distinct  difference 
between  sonata  music  and  all  other  music — but  the  dif- 
ference for  him  lies  purely  in  content  and  not  in  form. 
Thus  the  Schumann  G  Minor  Sonata,  written  in  strict 
sonata  form,  to  Ornstein  is  not  sonata  music;  while  the 
same  composer's  F  Sharp  Minor  Sonata,  though  much 
freer  in  style,  impresses  him  at  once  as  true  sonata  music. 
In  his  own  Sonata,  Op.  31,  which  is  certainly  not  a  sonata 
in  any  formal  sense  of  the  word,  Ornstein  uses  the  title 
"owing  to  a  certain  classical  severity  of  spirit  it  possesses, 
which  has  nothing  to  do  with  period,  and  which  distin- 
guished this  kind  of  music  from  others." 

Much  of  the  color  that  lends  so  rich  a  glow  to  Orn- 
stein's concepts  has  a  Greek  or  an  Asiatic  base.  The 
impression  made  upon  him  by  the  music  of  the  Greek  and 


His    Ideas  47 

Armenian  Churches  and  the  Hebrew  chant  has  already 
been  mentioned.  As  he  himself  says:  "There  is  hardly 
a  composition  of  mine  which  fails  to  offer  proof  of  what 
a  lasting  and  thorough  impression  Greek  ritual  music 
and  the  Asiatic  chant  have  made  upon  me,  though  I  have 
never  exploited  traditional  'themes'  or  'material.'  " 

We  have  already  intimated  that  Ornstein  is  by  no 
means  narrow  in  his  musical  sympathies.  His  stand  is 
in  keeping  with  his  whole  theory  that  the  brotherhood  of 
man  (at  present,  alas,  so  far  from  being  realized!)  has 
an  analogy  in  a  corresponding  brotherhood  of  tone:  that 
there  is  no  one  tone,  no  combination  of  tones,  but  which 
is  related  to  all  others.  It  is  merely  a  question  of  dis- 
covering their  connecting  ties.  To  quote  Ornstein  once 
again:  "Perhaps  these  affinities  cannot  be  mathematically 
demonstrated;  this  does  not  mean  to  say  that  they  do 
not  exist,  for  there  is  an  inner  psychic,  emotional  rela- 
tionship which  transcends  all  others  in  importance." 

What  is  Ornstein's  attitude  toward  his  modernistic 
brothers-in-arms,  whose  music  he  has  so  widely  and  gen- 
erously exploited,  and  to  the  great  ones  of  the  past? 
Bach,  first  of  all,  Beethoven,  Mozart,  Schumann,  Tschai- 
kovsky — all  find  a  place  in  his  heart  and  on  his  programs. 

But,  with  the  exception  of  Bach  and  Chopin,  they  do  not 
mean  to  him  what  Franck,  Ravel,  Debussy,  Stravinsky,  Scri- 
abine,  Schonberg,  Cyril  Scott  do.  Ornstein  has  often  been 
spoken  of  as  an  imitator  of  Schonberg;  yet  The  Wild 
Men's  Dance,  and  others  of  his  more  individual  compo- 
sitions, had  been  written  before  he  had  ever  seen  or  heard 
anything  by  the  Viennese  composer.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
despite  surface  resemblances,  the  two  have  little  in  com- 
mon. As  Ornstein  says:  "It  is  but  necessary  to  compare 
a  page  of  my  music  with  that  of  Schonberg  to  see  the 
vast  difference  between  their  concept  and  methods  of  ex- 
pression."    From  Ornstein's  standpoint  Arnold  Schonberg 


48  Leo    Ornstein 

is  a  cold,  analytical  geometrician,  who  dissects  every  detail 
of  life  and  photographs  it  on  music  paper.  Stravinsky 
he  regards  as  Schonberg's  direct  opposite,  a  vital  genius 
who  is  in  full  sympathy  with  life,  and  regives  it  in  tone; 
though  Ornstein  feels,  perhaps,  that  his  music,  unlike  his 
own,  does  not  enter  as  intimately  into  the  commonplaces 
of  existence.  Debussy  and  Chopin  he  brackets  as  well- 
nigh  perfect,  each  in  his  own  manner,  since  each  realizes 
his  own  limitations  and  does  not  strive  to  exceed  them. 
In  Florent  Schmitt  he  sees  a  combination  of  the  good 
and  bad  qualities  of  Debussy  and  Ravel.  But,  fond  as  he 
is  of  Debussy,  with  Harold  Bauer  and  Rudolph  Ganz 
Ornstein  agrees  in  regarding  Ravel  as  the  greater  com- 
poser. He  has  lived  more  intensively  and  gets  at  the 
very  core  of  life,  which  Debussy  sees  through  the  medium 
of  poetic  introspection.  To  Ornstein  their  beauty  differs 
only  in  degree.  "Ravel's  music  has  the  beauty  of  realism, 
Debussy's  that  of  poesy.  All  truth  is  beautiful  to  me 
and  both  have  the  beauty  of  truth,  only  that  Debussy 
gives  us  the  truth  of  fancy  and  Ravel  that  of  actuality." 
Among  the  Russians  Ornstein  admires,  in  particular,  Mous- 
sorgsky,  "the  father  of  modern  music,"  and  Scriabine. 
In  the  latter  Ornstein  sees  another  great  artist  who  created 
his  art  out  of  life,  a  composer  who  had  reached  a  point 
where  he  had  grown  so  sensitive  to  sorrow  that  he  was 
hardly  able  to  make  his  grief  articulate.  Albefiiz's  music 
Ornstein  likes.  The  latter's  Iberia,  which  he  calls  "very 
vulgar  but  full  of  honest  realism  and  a  humanity  which 
saves  it  from  being  banal,"  is  one  of  his  favorites.  Of 
Cyril  Scott,  his  fellow  modernist,  he  frankly  says  that, 
in  his  opinion,  "he  has  written  much  poor  music  and  some 
that  is  excellent.  At  a  second  glance  much  that  he  has 
done  is  far  less  original  than  one  might  think.  His  Sonata 
for  piano.  Op.  63,  is  very  fine.  Scott  sent  it  to  me  when 
I  was  in  London — and  I  did  not  like  it.     A  year  later  I 


His    Ideas  49 

looked  it  over  again  in  New  York  and  was  surprised  to 
discover  a  number  of  beautiful  pages.  It  it  absolute  music 
of  a  high  type  and  I  have  played  it  both  in  New  York 
and  Boston." 

We  have  quoted  these  opinions  of  Ornstein  to  give 
an  idea  of  his  catholicity  of  taste,  his  genuine  interest  in 
what  his  contemporaries  are  doing  to  find  their  own  sal- 
vation and  that  of  their  art  in  individual  development. 
An  article  by  the  composer  in  a  recent  issue  of  The  Seven 
Arts  on  The  Music  of  the  New  Russia  not  alone  em- 
phasizes this  attitude  of  mind,  but  also  throws  an  inter- 
esting light  on  his  own  philosophy  of  tone.  What  he 
says  of  Moussorgsky,  for  instance,  might  be  quite  as 
appositely  applied  to  himself.  "The  distinctive  quality  of 
the  new  impulse  in  art  has  been  the  need  of  expression 
through  direct  contact  with  the  emotions — a  rediscovery 
and  restatement  of  men's  experience.  Art  has  torn  itself 
from  the  admitted  routines  and  honored  idioms;  it  has 
come  to  realize  the  inadequacy  of  conceiving  modern  life 
according  to  the  old  and  accepted  formulcs!" 

And  again:  "Music  has  become  too  finished,  too  me- 
chanically perfect.  So  little  has  been  left  to  the  imagina- 
tion of  the  listener  that  he  is  no  longer  required  to  create 
toward  the  artist.  In  all  epochs  of  great  musical  art — 
the  epoch  of  Bach,  the  epoch  of  Cesar  Franck,  for  in- 
stance— it  was  realized  that  the  province  of  art  was  not 
to  instil  a  passive  pleasure  in  the  listener.  Great  music 
must  wake  in  us  a  creative  impulse.  Unless  it  does  that, 
it  has  failed  to  fulfil  its  destiny." 

This  question  of  the  listener  creating  toward  the  artist 
is  one  which  has  largely  preoccupied  Ornstein,  and  is  a 
factor  in  all  his  creative  work.  The  music-lover,  the 
auditor,  from  his  standpoint,  should  not  content  himself 
with  the  passive  sensuous  enjoyment  of  a  shower-bath  of 
sound.     The  appeal  of  Ornstein's.  music  is  made  directly 


50  Leo    Ornstein 

to  the  imagination  of  the  listener;  he  strives  to  intensify 
and  perfect  the  expression  of  emotion  to  such  a  degree 
that  those  who  hear  it  react  creatively;  that  is,  are 
awakened  to  a  definite  individual  concept  and  apprecia- 
tion of  its  meaning.  As  the  composer  himself  has  already 
said,  he  does  not  expect  the  listener  to  feel  his  music 
exactly  as  he  himself  feels  it;  even  as  regards  his  pieces 
a  programme  he  understands  that  there  are  bound  to  be 
as  many  variants  as  there  are  individual  listeners.  But 
since  his  music  stands  for  the  actual  embodiment  in  tone 
of  various  phases  of  his  own  emotional  life,  he  asks  of 
those  who  hear  or  study  his  music  to  bring  to  its  hearing 
or  playing  some  of  that  psychic  sympathy  which  is  the 
common  property  of  all  beings  who  are  capable  of  feel- 
ing emotion.  Only  the  very  poor  in  spirit  will  find  that 
this  appeal  awakens,  in  some  one  way  or  another,  no  an- 
swering chord  in  their  own  breast;  only  in  those  to  whom 
psychic  emotion  is  a  mere  phrase,  who  cannot  define  it 
by  their  own  experience,  will  its  vibrations  rouse  no  inti- 
mate overtone.  And  this,  again,  is  in  accord  with  the 
composer's  dictum:  "The  less  important  thing  is  whether 
or  no  beautiful  music  be  written.  The  vital  issue  is  to 
write  music  which  is  sincere,  which  has  in  it  the  germ  of 
individual  emotional  vitality;  for,  after  all,  emotional 
comprehension  is  localized  within  the  individual  conscious- 
ness." And  we  might  close  this  resume  of  Ornstein's 
ideas  and  ideals  in  composition  with  the  short  Credo,  which 
in  a  manner  epitomizes  his  philosophy:  "It  is  my  aim  to 
express  life  in  music  as  I  perceive  it." 


HIS  WORK 
For  those — and  their  number  grows 
continually — who  have  mastered  Orn- 
stein's  idiom  sufficiently  to  come  to  an 
understanding  of  the  content  of  his  art 
and  the  quality  of  the  human  experience 
there  transmuted  into  sound,  the  form 
is  little  short  of  perfect.  .  .  .  An  inter- 
pretation of  the  facets  of  life  revealed 
by  this  new  music  remains  the  soundest 
of  approaches  to  a  comprehension  of  it. 
Paul  L.  Rosenfeld. 


«b 


III. 

HIS   WORK 

Y  their  works  shall  ye  know  them."  The  scriptu- 
ral injunction  applies  to  composers  as  well  as 
to  all  other  workers,  and  Ornstein's  creative  out- 
put represents  the  practical  development  of  his 
ideas,  the  tally  of  actual  accomplishment,  without  which 
all  theory  is  but  barren  speculation.  Nearest  at  hand  and 
logically  calling  for  first  consideration  are  his  pianoforte 
compositions.  The  piano  is  the  composer's  own  instru- 
ment, and  in  his  piano  music  his  ideals  and  ideas  find  their 
most  direct  and  generally  available  exposition. 

And  since,  in  a  degree,  his  piano  compositions  are  so 
closely  linked  with  his  work  as  an  interpreting  artist,  their 
consideration  might  well  be  prefaced  by  some  remarks  on 
the  composer  as  a  pianist.  The  adequacy  of  his  techni- 
cal equipment  is  not  to  be  questioned.  As  A.  Walter 
Kramer  has  summed  it  up :  "Of  his  pianism  nothing  need 
be  said  but  that  he  plays  superbly,  in  a  manner  that  leaves 
no  doubt  as  to  his  position  among  present-day  virtuosi. 
But  he  is  more  than  that,  he  is  a  personality."  Now,  a 
personality,  especially  on  the  concert  platform,  lays  him- 
self open  to  the  suspicion  of  being  a  poseur  by  the  least 
departure  from  the  canons  of  the  conventional.  The  in- 
cidentals of  his  manner  of  playing,  the  length  of  his  hair 
or  the  cut  of  his  nails,  are  scrupulously  examined  as 
regards  their  conformity  to  accepted  usage;  any  depart- 
ure therefrom  is  set  down  as  a  love  for  affectation  and 
sensationalism  which,  more  or  less,  questions  the  artist's 
sincerity. 

Those  who  know  Ornstein  personally  are  aware  that 


54  Li:o    Orn STEIN 

there  is  no  suspicion  of  pose  in  the  unconscious  manner- 
isms which  are  revealed  in  his  playing  in  public.  To  quote 
Mr.  Kramer  once  more:  "They  are  part  of  Leo  Ornstein, 
and  Leo  Ornstein  is  important  enough  to  be  considered 
seriously  even  if  he  does  toss  his  head  at  the  close  of  a 
composition."  Yet  the  details  of  his  technical  presenta- 
tion at  the  keyboard  have  furnished  matter  for  abundant 
discussion. 

Leo  Ornstein  at  the  piano  has  often  been  limned  in 
picturesque  phrase.  Huneker  says:  "Yet  I  do  bewail  the 
murderous  means  of  expression  with  which  Leo  Ornstein 
patrolled  the  piano.  He  stormed  its  keys,  scooping  chunks 
of  slag  and  spouting  scoriae  like  a  vicious  volcano."  He 
attests:  "I  was  stunned,  especially  after  glissandi  that 
ripped  up  the  keyboard  and  fizzed  and  foamed  over  the 
stage" — feeling,  no  doubt,  like  another  commentator  on 
whom  Ornstein's  playing  had  made  "the  unique  impres- 
sion of  a  grand  piano  frothing  at  the  mouth."  Yet 
Huneker  does  not  neglect  to  pay  tribute  to  the  player's 
"liquid  touch,"  and  declares  "his  tone  is  rich,  massive, 
his  color  scheme  varied,  his  phrasing  musical,  subtle," 
and  insists  that  "he  is  that  rare  thing — an  individual  pian- 
ist." Farnsworth  Wright  states  that  Ornstein's  idea 
"seems  to  be  to  hit  the  note  with  that  part  of  the  hand 
which  is  nearest,"  to  "use  the  knuckle,  the  flat  of  the 
thumb  or  the  palm  of  the  hand;  and  take  a  crack  at  the 
notes  with  the  back  of  the  wrist  if  you  want  to,  but  not 
to  strike  the  keys  with  the  foot,  and  never,  never  follow 
the  established  rules  of  technique."  He  admits  at  the 
same  time  that  "it  is  doubtful  whether  Ornstein's  music 
can  be  played  according  to  anapests,  dithyrambs  and  bi- 
metrical  or  tri-metrical  rules." 

Again,  at  one  of  his  London  concerts  a  critic  spoke  of 
"the  appalling  noise"  Ornstein  generated  by  "a.  method 
(juite   new"    to   him.      "It   was   produced   by   putting   the 


His    Work  55 

fingers  close  together,  stiffening  the  hands  and  striking 
alternately  down  on  the  keyboard  perpendicularly  in  ram- 
rod fashion  as  hard  as  possible,  with  the  loud  pedal  down. 
Another  startling  effect  was  produced  by  slapping  the 
upper  notes  of  the  ke3'board  and  hitting  out  with  the  left 
hand  at  some  notes — it  did  not  seem  to  matter  which — 
in  the  bass."  Even  if  this  somewhat  exaggerated  descrip- 
tion were  exact  in  every  detail,  the  fact  remains  that 
technique  is,  in  the  broader  sense,  incidental — it  is  the 
attainment  of  the  effect  desired  itself  that  counts,  not  the 
means  of  attainment. 

And  H.  T.  Parker,  writing  in  the  Boston  Transcript, 
allows  for  the  fact  "that  what  some  have  called  and  will 
call  tricks  of  manner  seem  to  others  only  habit  that  was 
once  careless  and  is  now  settled.  Sometimes,  for  exam- 
ple, he  crouches  with  bent  shoulders  over  the  keyboard 
until  his  face  seems  almost  buried  in  it.  Again,  when  he 
is  using  the  lowest  bass  or  the  highest  treble,  he  turns 
himself,  as  it  were,  into  the  corner  of  the  instrument 
where  the  respective  keys  lie;  and  he  has  a  curious  idio- 
syncracy  of  playing  with  one  foot  poised  in  air  before 
he  lets  it  fall  upon  a  pedal.  He  also,  and  visibly,  can  gather 
the  whole  muscular  and  nervous  strength  of  his  tense 
young  body  and  launch  it,  as  in  a  flash,  upon  his  music 
and  piano.  He  does  all  these  things,  however,  in  a  mat- 
ter-of-fact fashion,  as  though  they  were  as  natural  to 
him  as  the  reticent  and  retiring  fashion  in  which  he 
acknowledges  applause." 

We  should  not  forget  to  register  a  recipe  offered  by 
the  Australian  Music  News  of  February  1,  1916,  for  the 
performance  of  Ornstein's  music,  according  to  that  paper's 
conception  of  Ornstein's  technique :  "Always  wear  boxing- 
gloves  when  you  set  out  to  play  Ornstein's  music  in  pub- 
lic. They  will  be  of  great  assistance  in  the  actual  per- 
formance;    they    will    come    in   very   handy   afterward — 


56  Leo"Ornstein 

when  the  audience  sets  out  to  express  its  views  of  what 
you  have  been  playing."  This  recipe,  by  the  way,  was 
adopted  recently  for  a  humorous  musical  "take-off"  of 
the  pianist  presented  at  a  meeting  of  the  New  York  Bohe- 
mians, and  none  enjoyed  it  more  than  the  young  Russian 
composer-pianist. 

But  we  will  let  Ornstein  speak  for  himself  with  regard 
to  two  important  phases  of  his  technic :  "One  of  the  most 
interesting  statements  I  have  ever  heard  anent  pianoforte 
playing  was  Leschetiszky's  remark  to  me  that  'Half  a 
pianist's  technic  lies  in  the  pedals.'  It  took  a  long  time 
before  I  thoroughly  understood  what  he  meant.  It  was 
while  experimenting  with  the  music  of  Debussy  and  Ravel 
that  I  first  realized  how  impossible  it  was  to  give  a  satis- 
factory performance  with  the  fingers  only.  For  months 
I  labored  until  I  had  devised  a  system  .which  established 
absolute  sympathy  between  pedal-work  and  finger-work. 
And  then  I  found  that  the  color  possibilities  of  the  instru- 
ment were  practically  limitless.  By  delicate  manipulation 
of  the  pedals  I  found  I  could  melt  shade  into  shade  in 
infinite  variation  of  the  dynamic  tone-palette.  But  first 
I  had  learned  to  breathe  with  the  music,  so  to  say,  to  let 
the  pedal  pulsate  with  my  own  emotional  perception.  It 
is  not  enough  to  thrust  down  the  pedal  with  the  foot  and 
change  with  new  harmonies.  I  found  that  by  using  half 
and  even  a  quarter  of  my  pedal  I  could  produce  the  most 
delicate  tonal  tinges.  The  psychological  moment  comes 
when  you  strike  the  key,  after  having  prepared  your  attack 
by  lifting  and  shutting  ofif  the  damper.  It  is  a  very  deli- 
cate process,  and  months  passed  before  I  had  secured 
absolute  coordination  of  finger-  and  foot-work.  Relaxa- 
tion and  manner  of  attack  also  have  much  to  do  with  a 
varied  tone-production ;  yet  fundamentally  I  believe  that 
the  preparation  of  the  pedal  to  receive  the  stroke  of  the 
finger  is  the  most  important  factor. 


His    Work  37 

"Quite  often,  in  playing  my  own  pieces,  I  use  the  palm 
of  the  hand.  But  I  use  it  merely  as  a  matter  of  conve- 
nience, since  in  many  cases  it  would  be  physically  out 
of  the  question  for  me  to  play  the  chord  in  any  other 
way.  And  often  I  secure  a  heightened  brilliancy  which 
I  may  desire.  Strange  to  say,  the  body  of  chord  sound 
produced  in  this  manner  is  less  harsh  than  would  be  the 
case  if  the  notes  were  played  with  the  fingers,  for  in  throw- 
ing the  whole  palm  of  the  hand  on  the  keys  my  invariable 
tendency  is  to  relax." 

Ornstein's  color  sense,  his  marvelous  mastery  of  touch 
graduation  and  tonal  nuance  and  shading  in  playing,  his 
absolute  control  of  pedal  possibilities  and  his  successful 
exploitation  of  every  elusive  and  colorful  keyboard  means ; 
his  singing  development  of  what  (in  his  connection)  have 
been  termed  "the  head-tones  of  the  piano,"  his  use  of 
"a.  pressure  touch  in  pianissimo,"  the  glow,  the  plangency 
of  a  piano  tone  whose  "long  sweep,  sustained  volume  and 
reverberant  climax  has  become  more  and  more  supple  in 
the  play  of  ornament,  more  even  and  transparent  in  runs. 
more  liquid  in  arpeggi,  more  crisp  in  octaves,  more  spark- 
ling in  the  light  fioriture  of  the  piano,"  have  been  exem- 
plified not  alone  in  the  playing  of  his  own  compositions. 

As  might  be  expected,  the  great  modernists  are  close 
to  his  heart.  But  then,  so  is  all  great  music.  Bach,  the 
universal,  Cesar  Franck,  Debussy,  Chopin  and  Schonberg, 
Stravinsky  and  Ravel,  in  his  estimation  "the  two  greatest 
geniuses  of  Europe,"  are  represented  on  his  unconven- 
tional programs  together  with  Albeniz,  Cyril  Scott,  Paul 
Dukas,  Scriabin,  Bela-Bartok,  MacDowell  and  any  newer 
work,  no  matter  by  whom  composed,  which  Ornstein's 
inner  artistic  conviction  regards  worthy  the  attention  of 
the  general  public.  Ornstein's  Bach  and  Chopin  interpre- 
tations have  been  made  the  subject  of  more  or  less  criti- 
cism, and  not  without  some  semblance  of  validity.     Yet 


58  Leo   Ornstein 

it  should  be  remembered  that  no  pianist  would  be  less  likely 
to  feel  himself  bound  by  traditions  and  conventions  es- 
tablished by  others  than  Leo  Ornstein.  An  anarch  makes 
his  own  traditions,  and  considering  the  powerful  individ- 
ual trend  and  direct  sincerity  of  Ornstein's  nature,  his 
Bach,  even  though  presented  through  the  medium  of  Bu- 
soni's  transcript,  is  not  altogether  Busoni's  Bach,  nor  is 
his  Chopin  the  Chopin  of  de  Pachmann.  Critical  reserva- 
tions anent  Ornstein's  playing  of  Chopin,  for  instance, 
may  be  justified  yet,  as  Parker  says:  "Even  when  they 
depart  farthest  from  tradition,  these  versions  are  those 
of  an  intensely  individualized,  susceptible  and  little  curbed 
youth,  who  prefers  in  self-expression  to  be  honest  with 
himself  and  with  his  hearers."  And  "in  one's  twenties  it 
is  better  to  excel  in  self-assertion  than  to  hide  in  tame 
convention — when  before  and  in  no  middle  distance — is 
high  future  as  a  pianist." 

Ornstein  concentrates  on  establishing  what  he  calls 
"real  balance"  in  his  Chopin  playing,  and  laughs  at  the 
accusation  once  made  that  he  had  taken  all  the  measure 
lines  out  of  Chopin's  music.  The  musical  phrase  and 
period  are  his  guides  in  the  interpretation  of  every  com- 
poser's works  and  not  the  halken  that  divide  the  measures. 

Ornstein's  fame  and  reputation  as  a  pianoforte  inter- 
preter, in  particular  of  the  great  modernists  in  music,  has 
grown  independently  of  his  fame  as  a  composer.  The 
"high  future"  to  which  Mr.  Parker  so  prophetically  alludes 
has  begun  to  find  its  realization;  the  "pale  youth  whose 
next  recital"  the  London  Daily  Mail  a  few  years  ago  once 
begged  "sufiferers  from  complete  deafness  to  attend  in 
numbers,"  because  of  the  "engaging"  spectacle  presented 
by  "this  young  man  involved  in  one  of  his  frenzied  im- 
provisations," has  become  the  "twenty-two-year-old  anarch, 
whose  classic  precision  of  phrase  and  richness  of  touch 
have  placed  him  as  a  pianist  in  the  front  rank  of  those 


His    Work  59 

now  before  the  public."  No  longer  do  we  meet  with 
such  phrases  as  "brutal  assaults"  on  the  piano,  "expound 
— with  the  accent  on  the  pound"  and  "Mr.  Ornstein's 
noises"  to  describe  his  pianoforte  playing  of  his  own 
compositions.  With  an  increasing  measure  of  understand- 
ing of  his  aims  and  ideals,  with  a  growing  conviction  of 
his  artistic  honesty  and  sincerity  of  purpose,  and  greater 
familiarity  with  his  pianistic  idiom,  has  come  toleration, 
respect  and,  finally,  admiration  for  his  achievement. 

To  A.  Walter  Kramer  belongs  the  credit  of  having 
been  the  first  to  signalize  Ornstein's  musical  importance 
on  the  occasion  of  his  initial  public  appearance  in  this, 
the  land  of  his  adoption.  Writing  in  Musical  America 
(July  8,  1911)  of  "this  youth  whose  powers,  mental  and 
spiritual,  have  developed  far  in  excess  of  his  years,"  he 
dwells  on  his  ability  "to  play  with  a  force  that  is  compell- 
ing, with  an  expression  that  holds  tensely  an  audience  of 
thousands."  Where  London  critics  saw  only  a  "gulf  of 
discord,"  or  heard  "the  dual  efforts  on  a  pianoforte  key- 
board of  a  peripatetic  cat  and  an  infant  of  insufficient 
height  and  strength  to  hammer  the  notes  with  his  fists," 
Mr.  Kramer  realized  that  in  Ornstein's  piano  pieces  "one 
is  confronted  with  big,  original  musical  thought,  much 
melodic  material  and  an  unusually  fine  sense  of  harmony." 
And  with  all  the  eloquence  of  conviction  he  describes  his 
playing :  "With  a  touch  that  sings  with  surpassing  beauty ; 
such  tone  as  is  a  revelation  to  the  music-lover,  since  for 
it  one  could  readily  pardon  technical  imperfections.  But 
of  these  there  were  none !"  And  again :  "He  plays  as  he 
builds  his  climaxes,  with  a  crescendo  that  rises  from  note 
to  note  and  measure  to  measure,  until  one  is  fairly  up- 
lifted with  the  thrill  of  it.  He  plays  with  his  whole  soul, 
with  everything  that  is  in  him,  working  toward  the  out- 
giving of  the  greatest  result  that  he  can  imagine,  and  his 


60  Leo    Ornstein 

fine  mental  personality  is  behind  it  all,  regulating  every- 
thing that  he  undertakes." 

We  need  dwell  no  further  on  Ornstein  the  pianist.  Is 
not  the  tale  of  his  achievement  written  in  the  chronicles 
of  the  musical  magazines  and  daily  press?  Leaving  the 
interpreting  artist  for  the  subject-matter  of  his  interpre- 
tations, let  us  turn  to  the  consideration  of  his  works.  And 
for  this  consideration,  as  has  been  mentioned,  his  piano- 
forte compositions  offer  the  most  natural  point  of  departure. 

Ornstein's  original  compositions  for  the  piano  cover 
a  wide  range  of  mood  and  expression,  of  style  and  type. 
Among  them  are  the  numbers  of  his  "first  manner,"  in 
which  the  lyric  element  predominates,  whose  keynote  is 
a  certain  simplicity  of  means  and  which,  without  pre- 
tending to  the  more  complex  thought  content  or  techni- 
cal elaboration  of  his  later  writing,  are  all,  in  a  degree, 
touched  with  an  individuality  that  makes  itself  felt.  Even 
his  Pigmy  Suite,  Op.  9,  a  set  of  nine  easy  teaching  pieces, 
bears  this  out.  Among  these  charming  trifles  it  would 
be  difficult  to  duplicate  such  numbers  as  "March"  and 
"Merry-making"  in  collections  of  a  similar  general  type 
and  grade. 

The  three  numbers  of  Op.  4,  Valse  in  G  Major,  Sara- 
hande  and  A  Paris  Street  Scene  at  Night,  are  well  within 
the  range  of  the  amateur  of  average  ability.  The  first,  a 
pleasing  melodic  fancy,  built  up  on  an  organ  point,  and 
the  second  a  sonorous  and  musicianly  evocation  of  an 
old  dance-form,  do  not  call  for  special  comment.  The 
impressionistic  study  of  the  Paris  boulevards  at  night,  after 
the  arc-lights  have  been  lit,  is  decidedly  effective,  a  brilliant 
camera-reflex  bit  of  music  of  happy  pungency,  and  the 
very  antithesis  of  Debussy's  vocal  evocations  of  the  Lux- 
embourg gardens  in  his  Fetes  galantes.  It  should  be  men- 
tioned that  these  compositions  (as  well  as  Three  Russian 
Impressions  for  violin  and  piano.  Op.  37)  owe  their  pub- 


His    Work  61 

lication  to  the  interest  of  that  sterUng  musician,  Mr.  Wm. 
A.  Fisher,  himself  a  gifted  composer,  to  whom  they  were 
first  submitted,  and  who  at  once  recognized  their  promise 
and  accepted  them  for  the  house  he  represented. 

The  set  of  Nine  Miniahires  for  piano.  Op.  7,  are  worthy 
the  attention  of  any  pianist.  They  include  a  graceful 
Valse,  in  which  the  germ  of  the  "note-cluster"  puts  in  an 
appearance,  and  an  exceptional  Gavotte.  Here  the  com- 
poser, instead  of  writing  a  conventional  piece  of  its  type, 
suggests  a  sinister  and  dramatic  undercurrent  of  tragedy 
in  his  measures.  One  might  think  it  a  gavotte  danced  by 
Marie  Antoinette  at  Versailles,  the  night  before  the  mob 
hailed  the  royal  family  to  Paris,  with  the  guillotine  loom- 
ing up  in  the  future. 

Written  at  the  age  of  fourteen,  when  Schumann  and 
Tschaikovsky  still  influenced  his  thought,  Ornstein's  Six 
Lyric  Fancies,  Op.  10,  without  denying  their  inspirational 
parentage,  are  not  mere  imitations.  They  share  in  the 
generally  attractive  quality  of  all  the  composer's  earlier 
writing  for  his  instrument.  Romance  triste,  Capricietto 
and  In  modo  Scarlatti  in  especial  are  happy  examples  of 
their  type.  With  these  pieces  might  be  mentioned  the 
composer's  Seven  Moments  Musicales,  Op.  8. 

The  Russian  Suite,  Op.  12,  which  the  composer  played 
at  recitals  in  New  York  (1911)  and  Christiania  (1913), 
was  dedicated  to  the  Norwegian  pianist  Baker-Grondal, 
son  of  the  composer  Agatha,  who  also  played  it  at  Chris- 
tiania during  the  winter  of  1913.  With  the  exception  of 
a  Schumanesque  Berceuse,  the  numbers  of  the  Suite  reflect 
aspects  of  Russian  peasant  life:  a  Doumka  with  an  under- 
tone of  grief  ;  an  Ecstase — one  thinks  involuntarily,  since 
it  was  written  before  the  famous  decree,  of  Arnold  Bax's 
In  a  Vodka  Shop — though  its  music,  at  once  simpler  and 
more  ardently  sensuous  than  that  of  the  English  modern- 
ist's piece,  is  imbued  with  quite  another  spirit ;    a  Barca- 


62  Leo    Ornstein 

rolle;  a  typically  Russian,  almost  Asiatic,  Melancolie;  a 
Burlesque,  which  is  in  truth  a  peasant  dance,  and  a  Chan- 
son pathctiqiie  (a  left-hand  melody,  with  a  florid  accom- 
paniment in  the  right),  which  in  mood,  if  not  in  melody, 
is  akin  to  Tschaikovsky.  There  is  little  in  this  graceful 
and  attractive  music  to  identify  the  composer  with  the 
Notre-Dame  Impressions.  The  same  may  be  said  of  those 
happily  conceived  groups,  the  Cossack  Impressions,  Op.  14, 
and  the  Suite  Ukraine,  Op.  17. 

Finally,  the  Sonatina,  Op.  15  (MSS.),  "lucid  in 
melody  and  form,"  and  technically  not  unduly  difficult, 
is  written  in  G  sharp  minor.  It  employs  the  idiom  of 
the  Greek  folk-song  of  Asia  Minor,  and  is  frankly  lyric 
in  character,  with  a  particularly  charming  final  movement. 
Indeed,  despite  touches  of  French  impressionism,  it  almost 
seems  that,  had  Mozart  been  brought  up  in  twentieth  cen- 
tury Athens  instead  of  Salzburg,  he  might  have  been  its 
author. 

These  pieces  may  be  said  to  represent  the  more  con- 
ventional Ornstein — the  Ornstein  who  is  gracefully  and 
completely  at  home  in  the  well-beaten  paths  of  style  and 
harmony  sanctioned  by  tradition.  They  represent,  how- 
ever, especially  from  his  own  point  of  view,  a  lesser  phase 
of  Ornstein's  artistic  nature,  a  gift  for  pastel,  miniature 
and  water  color  in  music  on  the  part  of  an  artist  whose 
more  serious  work  demands  richer  means  and  mediums, 
a  more  untrammeled  freedom  in  expression  and  larger 
canvases  for  its  proper  development. 

It  is  not  these  compositions  already  considered  which 
have  led  Ornstein  to  be  called  an  "anarch,"  "the  only  true- 
blue,  genuine  Futurist  composer  alive,"  and  an  "agent  for 
the  spread  of  evil  doctrines  in  musical  art."  The  works 
which  have  established  his  reputation  as  a  composer  of 
individually  modernistic  ideals  and  trend  are  those  in 
which  he  gives  free  rein  to  his  inspiration  without  regard 


His    Work  63 

for  rule  and,  according  to  those  who  do  not  understand 
them,  without  rhyme  or  reason. 

The  best-known  and,  hence,  perhaps,  offering  the  near- 
est point  of  departure  for  an  account  of  what,  for  want 
of  a  better  term,  have  been  called  his  futuristic  composi- 
tions, is  his  Opus  3,  No.  2,  the  Danse  sauvage  ("The 
Wild  Men's  Dance").  Critical  opinion  has  seized  upon 
it  as  the  most  easily  accessible  of  Ornstein's  individualis- 
tic developments  of  mood  in  music.  Such  phrases  as, 
"Like  a  boy's  dream  of  wild  Indians,"  "the  rare  roast 
beef  of  all  Onistein  functions,"*  "crazy  carnival  of  legs  and 
rum,"  "more  suggestive  of  a  free  fight  of  ferocious  energy 
than  a  dance,"  "a  picture  of  primordial  beings  in  all  the 
savage  abandonment  of  the  wildest  of  corybantic  revels," 
record  some  critical  impressions.  To  one  mind  it  calls  up 
an  image  of  "an  imbecile  child  escaped  from  an  asylum 
into  a  room  where  a  piano  happened  to  be,  and  thump- 
ing it  with  all  his  might."  Again,  it  has  been  alluded  to, 
perhaps  not  without  an  inflection  of  irony,  as  "a  down- 
right classic,"  and  "its  point,  originality  and  suggestive- 
ness"  have  been  praised.  It  is  true  that  its  compelling 
power,  its  superenergetic  rhythms,  its  electric  vitality  can- 
not well  be  negatived.  Yet  this  "sheer  dynamic  force," 
this  "rhythmical  frenzy,"  to  one  able  v.^-iter**  on  subjects 
musical  represent  "nothing  so  much  as  a  child  in  an  un- 
controllable fit  of  hysteria,"  while  to  another,!  when 
played  by  Ornstein  himself,  this  "notable  piece  of  delin- 
eative  and  characterizing  music"  gains  a  "savagery  of 
voice,  a  clumping  rhythm,  a  reiteration  of  pounding  phrase, 
a  primeval  force  and  fury  which  make  it  sound  out  of 
the  stone  age  of,  by  and  for — as  some  will  say — the  cave 
men !" 


*  H.  F.   Peyser,  an  able,  eauatlc  and  honest  eritic,   nnfortuuately   not 
in  sympathy  with  Ornstein's  trend. 
**  Charles  L.  Buchanan. 
t  H.  T.  Parker. 


64  Leo    Ornstein 

Ornstein  himself  speaks  of  his  Wild  Men's  Dance  as 
"a  study  in  concrete  rhythms."  He  says:  "What  I  tried 
to  do  was  to  write  a  dance  so  intense  in  expression  that, 
though  physically  impossible  of  execution  as  a  dance,  it 
would  call  up  to  the  listener  on  the  wings  of  imagination 
the  limitless  strength  and  abandon  of  the  nature  dance 
in  primal  times!" 

The  listener  whose  mind  is  open  only  to  musical 
thought  expressed  with  positive  logical  continuity,  and  in 
accord  with  certain  accepted  rules  of  presentation,  can- 
not expect  to  grasp  the  vital  potency  of  a  mood  inspira- 
tion whose  logic  is  perfectly  emotional,  which  carries 
away  with  it  the  spirit  attuned  to  its  key-note  of  abso- 
lute abandon  of  sequential  arrangement.  If  the  listener 
does  not  understand  or  appreciate  the  Wild  Men's  Dance, 
it  is  hardly  likely  that  other  compositions  in  Ornstein's 
second  manner  will  appeal  to  him. 

Ornstein's  Deux  Impressions  de  Notre-Dame,  Op.  16, 
No.  1,  are  another  case  in  point.  The  grandiose  and  phan- 
tasmagoric character  of  these  two  mood  pictures  is  re- 
flected even  in  the  banal  criticism  passed  at  their  first 
London  performance  "that  the  sight  of  the  building  had, 
for  some  cryptic  reason,  filled  the  composer  with  terrors 
that  could  not  be  controlled."  And,  of  course,  the  pro- 
grammatic indication  of  the  chimes  in  the  first,  Sound  of 
Bells  Floating  through  the  Atmosphere,  has  not  escaped 
observation.  "Jangled  bells,"  "a  quite  clever  imitation  of 
cracked  bells,"  however,  do  not  adequately  describe  in  his 
music  "the  conflicting  yet  mellowed  resonances  which  ebb 
and  flow  from  within  and  without  in  vibrant  waves" 
through  the  vaulted  arches  of  the  great  Gothic  cathedral. 
And  it  is  the  spiritual  thought  underlying  the  trilling 
passages  in  handfuls  of  semitones,  and  the  post-Schon- 
bergian  use  of  major  seventh  chord  progressions  that  at 
once  forces  itself  upon  the  auditor  who  has  familiarized 


His    Work 


65 


himself  with  Ornstein's  tonal  idiom.  It  was  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1913  that  Ornstein  saw  Notre-Dame  for  the  first 
time  and  there  attended  mass,  and  so  powerful  an  impres- 
sion did  this  visualization  of  the  ancient  Gothic  pile  make 


Jm/i/u^^-i'tmy  d^    rloC^c^^    ^i< 


OC-'TTZC 


^ 


c/i.-rd  fp^f. 


I 


Lk*U 


;Ml 


i 


^ 


^ 


^^f^ 


^'v 


upon  him  that,  oblivious  of  all  else,  he  at  once  hastened 
to  his  hotel  to  set  down  his  impressions  on  paper.  To 
quote  his  own  words :  "I  have  sought  to  express  the  very 
soul  of  'this  vast  symphony  in  stone,'  as  Victor  Hugo 
calls  it,  to  recreate  the  very  spirit  of  those  deep  space 
dimensions  reverberating  with  the  passionate  prayers, 
hopes  and  aspirations  of  past  centuries."  And  the  first 
Impression,  as  Paul  Rosenfeld  so  well  puts  it,  conveys  a 
mysterious  aloofness,   a  historied   solitude  "with   its  gray. 


66 


Leo    Ornstein 


mounting  masses,  its  cloistral  reverberations  of  bells,  its 
savage  calls  of  the  city  to  the  one  standing  alone  with 
the  monument  of  a  dead  age." 

In  the  second  Impression,  The  Gargoyles,  the  compo- 
ser's imagination  has  reacted  with  a  sinister  and  terrify- 
ing eloquence  to  the  compelling  stimulus  of  its  subject. 
In  its  music  he  raises  from  the  dead  stone  the  gargoyles 
— those  fantastic  evocations  of  the  medieval  sculptor's  art, 
whose  grotesque  form  and  visage,  bestial,  rapacious,  lewd, 
demoniac  or  imbecile  in  turn,  borrow  the  lineaments  of 
monster,  bird  and  devil  to  express  the  revolt  of  the  crea- 
tive artist  and  thinker  against  the  tyranny  of  the  medie- 
val Church  and  State.  In  Ornstein's  musical  vision  these 
malign  aberrations  of  the  human  spirit,  these  concrete 
symbols    of    intolerance    and    tyranny    leave    their    lofty 


^  .71  •  ..  1, 

eeries,  and  descend  the  winding  stairways  of  the  cathe- 
dral from  tower  and  roof  to  gather  about  the  high  altar. 
There  the  spell  which  has  for  centuries  perpetuated  them, 
enduring  memorials  of  ancient  wrongs,  is  lifted;    and  they 


His    Work  67 

take  new  shape  and  substance  as  the  hidden  obverse, 
the  imphed  ideal  whose  antithesis  they  had  represented. 
A  poet's  dream — the  gargoyle  coming  to  life  for  a  fleet- 
ing moment  to  find  a  new  soul ! — and  expressed  with  a 
fervor,  a  chaotic  glory  and  confusion  of  irresistible  reso- 
nance that  compels  conviction !  And  yet  this  very  Im- 
pression, when  first  heard  in  London,  was  dismissed  with 
the  jeer  that  it  "suggested  a  battle  royal  of  cats  on  the 
tiles !" 

Here,  too,  should  be  mentioned  the  composer's  twenty- 
measure  rhapsody  The  Cathedral,  Op.  38,  No.  2,*  origi- 
nally written  to  give  a  practical  illustration  of  how  to 
perform  his  music. 

It  lias  the  following  program: 

The  moon  cast  its  rays  upon  the  cathedral,  which 
stood  in  its  majestic  omnipotence,  silently  waiting.  Sharp, 
black  figures  crawled  over  the  walls,  and  long,  writhing 
figures,  like  green  snakes,  tore  at  the  hard,  square  stones, 
their  white  teeth  bristling.  Bells  sounded,  first  loud  and 
harsh,  then  soft  and  mournful.  The  fate  of  a  universe 
seemed  concentrated  on  their  peal.  Suddenly  all  was  dark, 
and  a  sharp  shriek,  wild  and  piercing,  came  through  the 
black  night.  Great  blocks  of  stone  crashed,  falling,  into 
an  abyss,  into  figures.  A  loud,  piercing  wail,  then  all  was 
silence. 

It  is,  in  a  way,  an  echo  of  the  Notre-Dame  Impres- 
sions, akin  to  them  in  character,  and  the  composer  ex- 
plicitly states  that  his  program  is  suggestive,  an  aid 
toward  capturing  the  mood  of  his  music,  and  not  a  literal 
commentary  on  its  progress.  Quite  aside  from  its  avowed 
purpose  to  supply  a  key-piece  for  those  who  wish  to  be- 
come better  acquainted  with  his  idiom,  it  forms  an  inter- 
esting pendant  to  the  two  larger  "cathedral"  mood  pictures. 
The  composer  has  since  added  to  it  three  other  composi- 
tions (still  in  MS.)  :  No.  ],  The  Bells;  No.  3,  The  Monk 
— is  he  a  Rasputin? — and  No.  4,  The  Midnight  Mass,  and 

*  The  Musical  Observer,  December,  1913. 


68  Leo    Ornstein 

given  the  entire  set  the  general  title,  Four  Religious  Im- 
pressions. 

The  Impressions  de  la  Tamise,  Op.  13,  No.  1,  in  which 
we  hear  the  bells  of  Westminster  instead  of  the  chimes 
of  Notre-Dame,  is  a  mood  of  another  color.  Walking 
along  the  Embankment  one  Sunday  night  in  London,  the 
composer,  gazing  across  the  Thames,  saw  the  black  mass 
of  spires  and  chimneys  rising  on  the  farther  edge  of  the 
stream,  the  twinkling  lights  on  the  river  itself,  while  the 
soft  tolling  of  the  minster  bells  touched  the  entire  scene 
with  a  gentle  melancholy.  And  there  came  to  him  out 
of  the  night  a  vision  of  the  waters  of  the  river  rising  in 
an  agitated  torrent,  sweeping  away  the  bridges,  overflow- 
ing their  banks,  tearing  houses  and  people  into  their  inky 
gulf  and  bearing  away  the  multitudes  of  the  dead  upon 
its  bosom  till,  sated,  all  was  silent  save  the  bells  which 
now  pealed  out  a  threnody.  Such  is  the  composer's  in- 
terpretation. It  is  carried  out  in  a  scheme  of  abrupt 
modulatory  and  dynamic  contrasts,  of  exploitation  of  the 
alpha  and  omega  of  the  keyboard  register.  Its  music, 
H.  T.  Parker  says,  "seems  a  succession  of  strokes  rather 
than  an  unfolding  line."  Other  interpretations  than  that 
given  by  Ornstein  himself  have  been  read  into  it.  Most 
critics  see  it  as  a  realistic  apotheosis  of  toil,  as  a  program- 
matic picture  of  labor  with  imaginative  sound  detail,  as 
"a  rhapsody  of  grinding  cranes,  churning  turbines,  bells 
and  factory  whistles,"  of  a  scene  "near  the  docks,  where 
steamer  sirens  cry  and  the  noise  of  cranes  disturbs  the 
foggy  air,  and  all  is  gray  and  unbeautiful."  Yet  what- 
ever concept  it  calls  up,  its  potent  virility,  its  intensity, 
evokes  a  picture  of  sombre  power  in  the  mind  of  the  audi- 
tor, a  picture  which  is  the  reflex  of  its  youthful  glow  and 
vitality  of  inspiration. 

The  two  Pieces  a  Silhouette  (Shadow  Pieces),  Op.  17; 
the  Three  Preludes,   Op.  20;    the  Three  Moods   (Anger, 


His    Work  69 

Peace,  Joy),  Op.  23;  the  Three  Burlesques,  Op.  30,  and 
the  Eleven  Short  Piano  Pieces,  Op.  29,  are  all,  in  fact, 
mood  pictures,  with  or  without  programmatic  suggestion, 
chips  from  the  same  workshop  that  has  produced  the 
more  sustained  efforts  already  discussed.  The  first  of 
the  Shadow  Pieces,  a  Dance  of  Shadows,  is  a  veritable 
hurricane  of  counterpoint,  one  shadow  overlapping  the 
other  in  a  mad  whirl,  yet  whose  intricate  rhythms  never 
lose  clarity  and  whose  chords  evaporate  into  extended 
shadow  figurations.  The  Shadozvs  Pursued  (No.  2)  has 
a  symbolic  program.  The  child,  endeavoring  to  catch  his 
own  shadow,  typifies  man  who  calmly  at  first,  then  with 
growing  passion  and  intensity,  seeks  to  attain  his  desires 
— unsubstantial  shadows — and  perishes  in  the  vain  attempt. 
The  Three  Preludes  were  the  first  of  the  composer's  com- 
positions in  his  "own"  idiom  lacking  a  program.  They 
represent  an  endeavor  to  create  real  beauty  in  abstract 
sound  and  rhythm,  as  absolute  music.  The  first,  in  par- 
ticular, seeks  to  evoke  an  atmosphere  of  tragedy  within 
the  compass  of  a  few  measures,  and  the  third  may  be 
called  a  species  of  exultant  Bacchic  dance.  Of  the  Three 
Moods  the  composer  says:  "No  man  realizes  joy  until 
he  has  experienced  rage,  sorrow  and  its  resolution,  peace. 
And  to  understand  my  joy  you  must  understand  my  anger 
as  well,  for  my  conception  of  both  is  so  individual  that  one 
cannot  be  understood  without  the  other."  Of  the  three, 
Anger  stands  out  as  "a  finely  ugly  piece  of  music  of  tre- 
mendous rhythmic  interest,"  to  quote  A.  Walter  Kramer; 
while  a  critic  less  open  to  new  impressions  hears  in  it 
only  "noise  poured  forth  in  tremendous  volume."  Leonide 
Massine,  of  the  Ballet  Russe,  when  he  heard  the  Three 
Moods,  paid  ^he  composer  the  compliment  of  asking  him 
to  make  an  orchestral  transcript  of  them,  so  that  he 
would  be  able  to  present  them  in  the  interpretative  dance. 
The  Three  Burlesques  are  cynical,  bitter,  the  sorrows  of 


I 


Anger 


His    Work  71 

Werther  shot  with  the  disillusion  of  reality.  They  have 
been  compared  in  music  to  Sime's  drawings  in  art.  They 
satirize  in  turn  sentiment,  joy  and  elegance  with  a  harsh 
and  vicious  irony.  "I  do  not  spare  even  my  own  beliefs 
and  emotions,"  says  the  composer  of  them,  "and  have 
sacrificed  all  else  to  express  basic  truth  in  bizarre  carica- 
ture." The  Eleven  Short  Piano  Pieces  (Scenes  of  Paris- 
ian Life),  as  might  be  expected,  run  a  changing  gamut 
of  interest  and  appeal,  and  might  be  called  individual 
"voices  in  the  wilderness"  crying  their  creator's  gospel 
with  varying  inflections  of  intensity,  giving  brief  illumi- 
native vistas  of  his  language  and  ideals  in  a  reflex  of 
reactions  to  the  life  of  Paris  during  his  stay  in  that  city. 
They  are  tempestuous  and  ardently  emotional — true  mu- 
sical children  of  a  Sturm  und  Drang  period ! 

The  Seven  Fantasy  Pieces  one  critic  calls  "cubist" 
music  and,  derisively  referring  to  the  well-known  painting, 
"Nude  Descending  a  Staircase,"  implies  that  one  of  them 
might  well  be  termed  "Gentlemen  in  coat-of-mail  falling 
down  the  stairway  of  a  Fifth  Avenue  'bus."  Since  they 
have  no  individual  titles  and  are  intensely  modern  in  char- 
acter, the  gibe  may  be  forgiven  if  the  critic  was  honest 
in  recording  his  impression.  But  too  often  conscience  has 
no  sting  for  the  inventor  of  a  happy  phrase ! 

Here,  too,  might  be  mentioned  the  "Vannin"  numbers, 
The  Night  and  The  IValtzers.  Vannin  is  Ornstein,  yet 
not  Ornstein.  The  composer,  eschewing  the  theory  of 
double  personality,  does  not  claim  that  Vannin  is  the  Mr. 
Jekyl  of  his  Dr.  Hyde.  But  he  does  feel  that  there  is 
a  phase  of  his  creative  nature  which  is  distinct  and  indi- 
vidual, one  with  which  his  normal  creative  inspiration  has 
nothing  in  common.  Hence  unto  Vannin  is  rendered  that 
which  is  Vannin's  and  not  Ornstein's,  an  arrangement 
whose  logic  is  clear.  The  Night  paints  a  heaven  "of  brood- 
ing   skies,"    obscure,    sombre,    oppressive;     The    Waltsers 


"A  LA  Chinoise" 

(Street  scene  in  a  Chinese  town.) 


His   Work  73 

might  be  called  a  somewhat  over-accented  caricature  of 
the  social  dance,  a  twentieth-century  Ox-Minuet,  in  which 
grosser  humans  take  the  place  of  the  oxen. 

A  la  Chinoise  (1911)  Op.  39,  dedicated  to  Rudolph 
Ganz,  and  played  by  the  Swiss  pianist,  is  probably  the 
most  "photographic"  composition  Ornstein  has  written. 
Tremendously  difficult  and  effective,  it  is  a  tone  picture 
of  the  street  life  of  a  Chinese  city.  In  a  glowing,  exotic 
quasi-cacophony  it  weaves  a  brilliant  web  of  sound  in 
which  are  caught  up  the  tintinnabulations  of  pagoda  bells 
swaying  in  the  breeze,  the  head-voice  chatter  of  a  Chinese 
crowd,  cries  of  merchants  soliciting  purchasers  for  their 
wares,  above  the  swelling  chant  of  bonzes  in  processional, 
the  curses  of  the  beggars  thrust  aside  by  the  pikemen  of 
some  mandarin's  escort,  the  pentatone  din  of  Chinese 
orchestras,  and  a  thousand  and  one  other  flashes  of  inci- 
dental sound  impinging  on  murmuring  tmdercurrent  of 
alien  street  noises. 

The  Danse  arahe  (1914),  an  Arabian  Nights'  fancy, 
might  be  called  a  companion  piece  of  A  la  Chinoise.  A 
blind  beggar  woman  of  Bagdad  or  Bassorah,  once  a 
caliph's  favorite,  appeals  to  the  pity  of  the  passerby  with 
her  cry  for  alms.  She  tells  the  story  of  her  fall  from 
her  former  high  estate.  She  recalls  the  seductive  powers 
of  the  dance  which  led  the  Commander  of  the  Faithful 
to  raise  her  from  the  ranks  of  the  almees  to  the  mistress 
of  the  hareem  and  a  life  of  luxurious  dalliance  and  in- 
trigue. But  earth's  glories  are  short.  The  caliph  dies  and 
she  is  blinded  by  his  successor's  order.  Again  her  voice 
drops  to  a  monotonous  drone  as  she  pleads  for  alms. 
The  music  develops  the  sharp  contrasts  of  pathos  and 
sensuous  delight  with  notable  effect,  and  actually  tells  the 
ftory  at  which  the  rather  colorless  title  merely  hints. 

The  Improvisata  and  the  Galop  Fantastique  are  pieces 
of  the  same  year  (1914).     In  the  first  the  composer  em- 


74  Leo    Oknstein 

ployed  his  title  more  or  less  as  a  general  indication  for 
the  designs  and  colors  born  of  his  imagination.  It  is 
nature  music,  a  sort  of  seascape  of  brutal  and  aggressive 
character,  yet  full  of  vigor  and  vitality  of  movement. 
The  Galop  Fantastique  is  a  mad  elemental  rout.  It  is  a 
weaving  together  of  the  voices  of  the  storm-winds  and 
the  roar  of  oceanic  billows  and  has  a  tremendous  sweep 
and  swing. 

The  Masqiieraders,  composed  about  a  year  and  a  half 
ago,  is  another  one  of  those  bizarre  ideas  to  which  Orn- 
stein's  peculiar  talent  lends  such  vivid  life  in  tone.  An 
earlier  impressionist,  Francois  Couperin,  has  evoked  a 
set  of  maskers  in  his  Folies  francaises  ou  les  Dominos,  a 
set  of  variations  on  a  single  harmonic  theme.  In  them  he 
introduces  Shame  in  rose,  Impetuosity  in  red,  Hope  in 
green.  Longing  in  violet.  Perseverance  in  gray,  etc.,  but 
they  are  all  frivolous  masqueraders,  beneath  whose  dis- 
guises are  gay  faces,  guileless  of  all  ulterior  motive. 
Ornstein's  Masqueraders  wear  similar  masks  of  many 
colors,  but  their  masks  are  an  artificial  outer  cloak  to  hide 
the  soul  reflected  in  their  faces.  These  veiled  prophets 
of  Khorassan,  fair  and  noble  to  outward  seeming,  as  they 
are  borne  along  in  pleasure's  rout,  lose  their  disguise  at 
the  midnight  hour  and  stand  hideously  revealed  in  all 
their  true  baseness  and  pretence.  The  composer  has  con- 
ceived this  picture  "from  a  photographic  point  of  view," 
and  has  carried  it  out  with  uncompromising  realism. 

To  return  from  these  shorter  numbers  to  the  larger 
works,  we  have  the  Suite  des  Gnomes  (Dwarves'  Suite), 
Op.  11,  composed  in  1913,  with  its  symbolic  program  rep- 
resenting the  life  of  man,  for  man  is  a  dwarf,  a  pigmy, 
helpless  in  the  grip  of  cosmic  forces.  (1)  Dawn  is  the 
gray  dawn  of  the  soul's  awakening  to  the  realities  of  life. 
The  tragic  undercurrent  of  meaning  in  the  music  denies 
with   fatalistic  resignation  the  possibility  of  either  joy  or 


His    Work  75 

sorrow  in  a  vale  of  tears.  (2)  Danse  des  Gnomes  (Dwarf's 
Dance).  Man  is  obsessed  by  the  futile  desire  to  flee  life's 
ennui  in  exhilarating  rhythmic  motion.  For  a  space  the 
dance  brings  forgetfulness,  but  soon  there  comes  reac- 
tion and  the  familiar  vista  of  eternal  sameness.  (3)  The 
Funeral  March*  is,  emotionally,  perhaps,  the  most  im- 
portant number  of  the  suite.  Its  pathos  is  deep  and 
unfeigned.  Written  in  triple  time,  it  is  no  conventional 
mortuary  march  with  a  "Song  of  Hope"  to  imply  that 
all's  well  that  ends  well.  It  is  rather  the  tonal  embodi- 
ment of  uncompromising  grief,  an  Oriental  chant  with 
the  wail  of  hired  mourners.  There  is  no  confident  looking 
forward  to  a  snug  immortality;  it  is  stark  despair  hiding 
away  that  which  is  no  more  in  the  ground.  We  taste 
the  black  earth  to  which  all  must  return,  we  feel  the  grit 
of  death  beneath  our  tongue,  we  hear  the  sods  rattle  on 
the  coffin-lid.  In  the  middle  there  is  a  great  despairing 
outburst  of  extended  hopelessness  and  resentment,  and 
at  the  end  the  tolling  of  fatalistic  bells.  (4)  The  Sere- 
naders  are  such  as  we  might  hear  before  "The  Harlot's 
House"  of  Oscar  Wilde,  when  "Love  passed  into  the  house 
of  lust."  Man,  abandoning  the  ideals  of  perfect  love, 
sings  his  passion  to  the  courtesan,  to  a  measure  in  which, 
like  his  slain  ideals: 


*  Beeth  Vanboven,  writing  in  the  Winnipeg  (Canada)  Telegram  in  1916, 
offers  some  iuterpsriiig-  ooiiiineuts  ou  the  Funeral  March  :  "'I  can  imag- 
ine a  .somewhat  vulval"  mind — seeking  for  images — being  impressed  by 
the  opening  movement  as  the  wrangling  of  stokers  in  Hades,  protesting 
at  the  prospect  of  another  denizen  of  earth  being  thrust  upon  them. 
...  It  is  not  out  of  tune  with  the  sombre,  diabolic  imagrination  of  the 
composer.  The  frightful  grinding  in  mid-piano  .  .  .  suggested  the  iron 
inexorability  of  death  .  .  .  death  as  a  colossal,  whirring,  palpitating 
machine,  a  titanic  crusher  of  bones.  The  cracked  chimes  at  the  close  had 
something  sinister,  awry,  diabolic  about  them  .  .  .  attributes  one  can 
readily  associate  with  a  mocking  requiem  tolled  by  lost  spirits  in  the 
black  swirl  of  the  underworld.  There  was  in  them  a  note  of  fiendish 
laughter,  as  of  a  fallen  archangel  gloating  over  the  dissipated  pomp  of 
earthly  existence  .  .  .  seared,  blackened,  defaced  in  death." 


'J'6  Leo    Ornstein 

"The  dead  arc  dancing  with  the  dead, 
The  dust  is  whirling  with  the  dust." 

(5)  At  Work  does  not  picture  the  soul-inspiring  gladness 
of  congenial  toil,  but  man  working  from  habit,  caught 
up  in  the  dull  mechanical  round  of  ceaseless  labor  with- 
out any  of  the  compensating  joy  of  achievement  to  sweeten 
its  monotony.  (6)  Ad  arc  he  grotesque.  Here  in  the  form 
of  a  theme  with  variations,  employing  cake-walk  rhythms 
to  parody  the  modern  social  dance,  we  have  the  wretched 
seeker  of  artificial  pleasure,  going  through  the  motions 
of  amusement  without  real  hope  or  interest.  The  final 
variation  might  be  termed  a  collective  cry  of  despair. 
A  program  such  as  this  makes  clear  that  the  Dwarf  Suite 
was  not  written  to  please.  It  is,  above  all  else,  a  most 
poignantly  sincere  expression  of  psychic  experience  and, 
as  A.  Walter  Kramer  has  said:  "If  ever  the  tragic  note 
has  been  sounded  in  modern  music  it  is  surely  to  be  found 
in  this  work!" 

The  Sonata,  Op.  25  (1914),  is  in  four  movements, 
entitled,  respectively,  Tragedy,  Love,  Mystery,  Retrospec- 
tion. Its  first  and  third  movements  ofifer  an  intensely 
vivid  record  of  personal  emotion  of  the  episodic  revolt 
of  youth  at  the  bitterness  and  delusions  of  actual  life, 
of  its  vague  hopes  and  aspirations ;  and  those  "other  emo- 
tions, timid  and  uncertain  of  themselves,  uneasy  with  the 
swelling  sap  of  springtide,  speak  their  poetry  and  their 
pain  in  the  movement  of  the  same  sonata  entitled  Love." 
And  in  the  finale.  Retrospection,  there  is  summed  up  all 
that  has  gone  before.  Its  sub-title.  The  Tragedy  of  a  Sotd, 
the  composer  has  always  hesitated  to  make  public  and 
it  appears  on  none  of  his  recital  programs.  He  himself 
says  of  it:  "I  have  tried  to  put  into  it  the  restlessness 
of  the  artist's  soul,  the  emotions  that  so  often  tear  at  my 
own."  It  is  alternately  passionate,  despondent,  elated, 
bitter,  joyous  and  melancholy. 


His    Work  77 

The  Concerto  for  piano  and  orchestra.  Op.  44,  still  in 
MS.,  is  written  in  C  sharp  minor,  in  the  usual  four  move- 
ments, and  is  built  up  on  Tschaikovskian  lines.  It  is 
emphatically  Russian  in  feeling  and  expression,  a  brilliant 
work,  full  of  pianistic  difficulties,  and  the  composer  will 
probably  be  heard  in  it  during  the  coming  season. 

Yet  these  works  by  no  means  complete  the  tale  of 
Ornstein's  piano  music.  The  recently  published  Serenade 
and  Scherzino,  Op.  5,*  are  graceful,  engaging  fancies  in 
his  earlier  manner,  which  one  need  not  be  a  modernist  to 
appreciate.  The  Valley  of  Tears  {Impressions  of  Nor- 
way) was  inspired  by  bleak  Scandinavian  landscapes,  and 
the  cruel  efforts  by  which  the  Norse  peasant  wrests  a 
bare  living  from  the  unwilling  soil.  His  most  recent  works 
include:  A  la  Mexicana,  three  folk-air  impressions  for 
the  piano ;  the  Arabesques,  Op.  48 ;  his  Poems  of  1917, 
Op.  68 ;  his  Suite  Belgium;  his  brilliant  Burlesques  of 
Richard  Strauss,  and  two  transcripts,  one  of  Dvorak's 
Humoresque,  planned  for  added  sonority  and  pianistic 
effect,  and  not  without  some  interesting  touches  of  the 
transcriber's  own  personality  in  its  development;  and  one 
of  a  Schubert  Moment  Musical,  a  version  in  which,  as  a 
glance  at  the  excerpt  on  the  page  following  might  tend  to 
prove,  the  anarch  handles  his  original  with  piety  and  regard 
for  its  piquant  charm. 

A  la  Mexicana,  three  engaging  playable  bits  of  local 
color  in  the  style  of  the  Mexican  danzon,  have  all  the 
light  grace  of  their  kind,  they  strike  the  folk-tune  note 
implied  by  their  title  with  happy  skill  and  ingratiating 
rhythm ;  and  their  obvious  colorful  attractiveness  will 
probably  meet  with  a  wider  meed  of  appreciation  than  will 
be  accorded  many  of  the  composer's  more  serious  works. 


*  Carl  Van  Vechten,  in  his  interesting  essay  on  Leo  Ornstein  ("Music 
and  Bad  Manners")  stresses  the  dual  musical  personality  of  the  composer 
of  the  Scherzino  and  The  Wild  Men's  Dance.  The  former  "was  not  the 
Ornstein  who,  in  a  dark  corner  of  I'ogliani's,  glowed  with  glee  over  the 
possibility  of  dividing  and  redividing  the  existing  scale  into  eighth,  six- 
teenth, and  twenty-fourth  tones.  .  .  ." 


78 


Leo    Ornstein 


An    interlinear    text    expressing    the    spirit    of    the    music 
emphasizes  their  racially  popular  character. 

The  Arabesques  do  credit  to  their  collective  title,  both 
ill   its   decorative   and   its   metaphoric   sense.     They   are  a 


/ f/'C-r>l.6>71/S^    ///u^tfc^c^i^ 


UK  rrr, 


« 


^^ 


^. 


Te 


^ 


series  of  individual  musical  designs,  rich  in  color,  but  (to 
borrow  a  geometric  term)  their  note-combinations  are 
curvilinear  rather  than  rectilinear.  Unlike  the  arabesques 
of  Saracenic  mural  art,  however,  their  involute  symmetry 
is  implied  rather  than  apparent.  In  their  way  they  are 
among  the  most  interesting  things  the  composer  has  done, 
and  their  fantastic  interweaving  of  musical  lines  is  carried 
out  with  a  fine  sense  for  effect.  Their  individual  titles 
give  wide  latitude  to  the  imagination  of  the  player. 

Some  sound  an  Oriental  note:  We  have  L'Isle  d' Ele- 
phantine, (1)  calling  up  visions  of  Nilotic  ruins,  and 
Melopee  de  Prctres  Hindous,  (3)  which  might  be  a  noc- 
turnal chant  rising  to  the  carven  roof  of  some  Benares 
temple.  L'Echo  Primitif  (2)  is  a  vague  emotional  cry  of 
primal  feeling,  half  rage,  half  plaining.     Eaux  Ombragees 


His    Work  -     79 

(4)  gives  us  the  feeling  of  "shadowed  waters,"  of  the 
veiled  deeps  in  forest  tarn.  In  L'Ame  des  Cloches  (5), 
and  the  Fresque  Pompeienne  (6),  the  first  a  study  in  bell- 
colors,  the  second  a  kind  of  Grecian  dance,  we  have  de- 
lightful bits  of  contrasted  programmatic  development. 
Passion  (7),  a  thrilling  bit  of  inspiration,  is  akin  to  L'Echo 
Primitif.  Le  Vent  qui  gemit  et  rage  (9),  is  another  bit 
of  nature-music  of  finely  wrought  and  expressive  quality; 
while  Les  Basoches  (8)  gives  us  a  convincing  impression 
of  medieval  grofesquerie.  The  pieces  are  compelling  and, 
despite  occasional  difficulties,  richly  repay  study. 

The  Poems  of  ipi/  were  written  in  Montreal.  A  group 
of  ten  pieces,  each  portrays  some  phase  of  the  suffering 
resulting  from  the  world  war,  and  reflects  the  anguish  and 
resentment  of  the  primal  savagery  which  drives  man  to 
shed  the  blood  of  his  fellows.  In  each  the  melodic  line 
is  very  distinct — and  in  the  accompanying  figure  recurs  a 
persistent  throb,  a  kind  of  rhythmic  pulse-beat  whose 
relentless  insistence  emphasizes  the  grief  which  is  the  soul 
of  their  inspiration. 

Waldo  Frank,  Associate  Editor  of  The  Seven  Arts, 
has  written  for  the  Poems  of  igij  a  prose  poem  of  rare 
beauty,  a  Prelude  which  shows  that  the  truth  and  sincer- 
ity of  their  music  has  made  a  direct  appeal  to  his  imagi- 
nation. Though  we  may  not  quote  the  Prelude  to  the 
Poems  of  ipi/  in  toto,  as  a  deserved  tribute  to  its  poetic 
appositeness  and  very  real  inspiration,  and  though  it  is 
hardly  right  to  do  violence  to  its  unity  by  a  mere  excerpt, 
we  cannot  forbear  giving  its  concluding  paragraphs — they 
express  the  true  spirit  and  inwardness  of  the  music's 
meaning  in  a  manner  which  could  not  be  bettered : 

"What  did  they  (men  and  women)  know  but  each 
other?  What  did  they  have  but  each  other?  What  could 
they  have  and  know,  save  one  thing — love?  The  Mystery 
of  Life  was  not  anguish  enough  for  them — the  bonds  of 


Passion 

(Arabesques) 


His    Work  81 

Birth  and  of  Death  were  not  helplessness  enough  for  them ; 
the  blind  ecstasy  of  the  world  that  circled  them  and  made 
them  quivering  flesh  of  its  despair  was  not  despair  enough 
for  them.    And  the  walls  of  their  prison  laughed. 

"I  stood  high  upon  the  agony  of  the  living  and  looked 
upon  men — upon  the  pity  of  men  who  had  love  and  who 
cast  love  away.  This  year  I  was  a  man  and  looked  about 
me.  And  I  saw  my  brothers  and  sisters — they  who  in  all 
the  common  blackness  of  their  lot  had  only  love,  and  who 
hated  each  other.  And  the  laughter  of  our  Prison  was 
clear  to  me.  So  the  years  of  all  my  life  shall  be  the  years 
of  my  sorrow." 

The  Suite  Belgium  is  another  series  of  mood  pictures, 
akin  to  the  Poems  of  ipi/,  and  springing  out  of  the  deep 
sympathy  evoked  by  the  fate  of  a  small  people  ground 
between  the  upper  and  nether  millstones  of  modern  war. 

With  the  Richard  Strauss  Burlesques  we  step  from 
tragedy  to  comedy.  Here  we  have  twelve  brilliant  essays 
in  musical  satire.  The  individual  pieces  have  no  titles, 
but  each  is  a  witty  burlesque,  playful  or  sardonic,  as  the 
case  may  be,  of  the  idioms  and  peculiarities  of  the  great 
Bavarian's  style  and  mode  of  expression,  with  apt  and 
telling  reference  to  his  incessant  modulatory  changes  and 
his  zig-zag  motives.  They  are  entirely  original  with  the 
composer,  since  he  has  not  had  recourse  to  Straussian 
themes  to  make  his  points.  Both  the  Burlesques  of  Rich- 
ard Strauss  and  the  A  la  Chinoise  will  be  heard  this  sea- 
son on  symphonic  programs,  in  the  composer's  own  orches- 
tration. 

His  piano  works,  thus  far,  may  be  said  to  represent 
the  best-known  expression  of  Ornstein's  creative  impulse; 
yet  it  would  be  strange  indeed  if  a  composer  of  such 
intense  creative  activity  and  abounding  imaginative  vigor 
had  not  essayed  other  mediums  of  expression. 

He  has,  in  fact,  written  in  all  the  larger  forms,  with 
the  exception  of  opera,  and  in  this  field,  too,  he  is  now 
trying    out    his    powers.      He    has    composed    symphonic 


82  Leo   Ornstein 

works,  choral  music,  chamber  music,  compositions  in  both 
the  larger  and  smaller  forms  for  the  violin,  the  'cello  and 
other  solo  instruments  and  songs. 

His  two  symphonic  poems  for  grand  orchestra.  The  Fog, 
and  his  orchestral  suite,  The  Life  of  Man  (the  latter  after 
Leonid  Andreyeff),  have  not  as  yet  been  heard  in  public. 

The  Fog,  a  London  impression,  evokes  an  elemental 
surging  of  the  phantasmagoric  shapes  which  rise  and  over- 
whelm the  sleeping  city  with  their  vague  and  shadowy 
menace.  The  Life  of  Man,  an  orchestral  suite,  is  a  more 
extended  work  and  comments  in  its  Prelude  and  five 
movements  the  Prologue  and  corresponding  acts  of  An- 
dreyeff's  drama.  Here  the  nebulous  tonal  chiaro-oscuro 
of  The  Fog  is  replaced  by  a  more  harsh  and  definite 
scheme  of  grays.  It  tells  in  tone,  as  the  drama  does  in 
dialogue  and  action,  the  tale  of  the  whole  life  of  Man, 
"with  its  dark  beginning  and  dark  end."  Its  moral  is 
best  expressed  in  Andreyeff's  words:  "And  ye  who  have 
come  hither  for  mirth,  ye  who  are  doomed  to  die,  look 
and  listen!  Lo,  the  swiftly  flowing  life  of  Man  will  pass 
before  you,  with  its  sorrow  and  its  joys,  like  a  far-ofif, 
thin  reflection!"  The  theme  of  the  "Being  in  Gray,"  who 
appears  in  the  Prologue  of  the  play,  and  in  each  succeed- 
ing act,  is  woven  into  the  harmonic  development  of  each 
movement  of  the  Suite. 

There  is  gloomy  power  and  compelling  contrast,  a 
tragic  significance  and  a  working  up  of  dramatic  inten- 
sity that  culminates  in  the  close  of  the  last  movement, 
where  "in  the  darkness  one  can  hear  the  movements  of 
the  wild  dancers,  the  shrieking,  the  laughter  and  the  dis- 
cordant and  desperately  loud  sounds  of  the  orchestra." 
Ornstein  has  tried  to  put  into  his  music  not  only  the  color- 
scheme  and  philosophy  of  the  drama,  but,  as  he  says: 
"I  have  even  gone  so  far  as  to  attempt  Andreyefif's  sharp- 


His    Work  83 

angled  rhythmic  effects,  which  are  an  unmistakable  factor 
in  the  power  of  the  play." 

The  piano  versions  of  A  la  Chinoise  and  the  Burlesques 
on  Richard  Strauss,  as  well  as  the  Funeral  March  from 
the  Dwarves'  Suite,  have  already  been  considered.  They 
are  to  be  heard  in  orchestral  guise  this  season,  and  Mr. 
Josef  Stransky,  whose  catholic  good  taste  and  absence  of 
all  narrow  prejudice  where  "new"  music  is  concerned 
is  well  known,  will  be  the  first  to  present  A  la  Chinoise 
— as  a  delightful  orchestral  bonne  bouche — and  the  Funeral 
March  with  the  New  York  Philharmonic.  Speculation 
regarding  symphonic  works  as  yet  unheard  is  more  or 
less  futile.  Yet  that  delicate  adjustment  of  the  individual 
tone-dynamics  of  the  chord  which  gives  so  rich  a  color 
to  the  composer's  piano  music  should  make  itself  felt  even 
more  convincingly  in  the  varied  timbres  of  the  symphonic 
ensemble.  And,  to  quote  W.  H.  Humiston,  an  authority, 
Stransky,  "who  is  keen  on  detail,  yet  who  never  neglects 
the  'grand  idea/ "  may  be  relied  upon  to  see  to  it  that 
his  artists  "put  their  best  foot  forward"  in  the  Funeral 
March,  and  give  A  la  Chinoise  its  full  measure  of  exotic 
glow  and  brilliancy  in  their  interpretation. 

In  the  field  of  chamber-music  Ornstein  has  done  some 
of  his  most  important  work.  We  have,  using  the  term 
in  its  broader  sense,  such  compositions  as  the  Impressions 
of  Switzerland  (Sunrise,  The  Forest,  The  Mountains, 
Sunset),  Op.  27,  for  piano  four-hand,  quartet  and  chorus. 
We  have— the  composer's  only  composition  in  which  his 
two  styles  may  be  said  to  have  been  blended — his  noble 
setting  of  the  Thirteenth  Psalm,  Op.  27,  in  which  the 
a  cappella  chorus  theme,  "How  long,  O  Lord,  wilt  Thou 
forget  me?"  is  developed  and  amplified  for  double  mixed 
chorus,  double  string  orchestra  and  piano. 

And  there  are,  besides,  a  Quartet  for  strings,  Op.  28; 
a  piano  Quintet,  Op.  49  (in  press),  and  a  Miniature  String 


84  Leo    Ornstein 

Quartet  in  his  most  advanced  manner.  In  the  last-named 
each  instrument  has  been  given  solo  treatment,  effective 
use  has  been  made  of  contrapuntal  devices  throughout 
the  four  movements,  and  a  peculiarity  of  the  first  is  the 
introduction  of  the  theme  by  the  first  violin.  The  work 
is  dedicated  to  the  Flonzaley  Quartet. 

Important,  too,  are  his  sonatas  for  violin  and  piano 
and  for  'cello  and  piano.  In  the  Sonata  for  violin  and 
piano.  Op.  26,  in  which,  according  to  the  acerb  H.  F. 
Peyser,  "the  violin  sings  itself  on  its  course  with  sugared 
complacency,"  Mr.  Von  Kunitz*  finds  "a  rich  soul-life 
unfolding  itself  through  a  mysterious,  logical  web  of  its 
own;  the  strange  dream  and  the  winning  simplicity  of 
the  Andante,  singing  of  distant  countries.  Eastern  sun- 
sets, Arabian  flowers,  far  away;  the  petulant  mockery 
of  the  Scherzo,  full  of  weird,  fantastic  caprice,  with  an 
emphatically  ponderous  'trio'-episode ;  and  the  serene  dig- 
nity of  the  Finale,  with  its  stirring  climaxes  and  its  wist- 
ful coda." 

It  is  a  work  not  without  Debussian  inflections,  most 
grateful  for  the  performer  (and  giving  undeniable  pleas- 
ure in  the  interpretation  of  an  artist  like  Miss  Vera 
Barstow).  Yet  it  does  not  compare  in  importance  of 
thought-content  with  the  famous  second  Sonata,  Op.  31, 
also  for  the  same  instruments,  which  represents  a  reac- 
tion to  the  influence  of  the  poetry  of  William  Blake,  and 
the  enthusiasm  for  the  new  musical  vistas  which  the 
writings  of  the  poet  opened  up  to  the  composer.  This 
sonata  has  come  in  for  its  full  share  of  derision :  "The 
wall-paper  design  sonata,"  "a  terrifying  looking  affair 
recently  printed"  were  among  the  comments  its  appear- 
ance evoked.  Its  difficulty  is  almost  prohibitive  and  the 
playing  of  the  piano  part  is  limited  to  the  virtuoso.  It  is 
thus   far,   however,   perhaps   the  most   sustained  develop- 


•  Canadian  Journal  of  Music. 


His    Work 


85 


ment  on  a  large  scale  of  an  inspiration  which  concentrates 
on  the  evocation  of  pure  emotion  in  music  and  holds  all 
else  more  or  less  negligible.     Purely  in  conformity  with 

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its  title,  for  it  cannot  be  called  a  "sonata"  in  any  formal 
sense,  it  is  divided  into  four  movements.  These,  to  quote 
A.  Walter  Kramer,  interpret  their  program,  the  Prelude 
to  William  Blake's  The  Marriage  of  Heaven  and  Hell, 
"as  far  as  we  can  judge,  faithfully  enough."  And  it  is 
unquestionably  "program  music  of  wonderful  sweep  and 
power,  music  of  demoniac  intensity  of  expression  and 
startlingly  vivid  dramatic  emphasis."  As  yet  uncompleted 
are  the  Sonatinas  for  violin  and  piano,  Op.  60  and  Op.  74. 
For  the  'cello  the  composer  has  written  no  less  than 


86  Leo    Ornstei 


N 


four  sonatas.  What  has  been  said  in  the  preceding  sec- 
tion regarding  Ornstein's  attitude  toward  form  is  applica- 
ble to  them.  There  is  also  a  Sonatina  for  'cello  and  piano 
which  has  not  yet  come  from  press. 

As  regards  his  shorter  compositions  for  violin  and  for 
'cello  they  reflect  a  more  lyric  and  quasi-conventional  type 
rather  than  his  most  individualistic  mode  of  expression. 
The  Three  Russian  Impressions,  Op.  37,  for  violin  and 
piano,  Olga,  Natascha  and  Sonja,  the  first  and  last  in 
waltz  tempo,  the  second  a  melody  in  folk-tone  style,  are 
Russian  in  the  Tschaikovskian  sense  (yet  with  a  flavor 
that  is  not  Tschaikovsky's),  colorful  and  effective,  despite 
their  conventional  mold.  Barcarolle  and  Scherzo  bear  an 
early  opus-number,  3;  and  Two  Miniatures,  Op.  9,  are 
transcripts  from  the  set  of  pianoforte  Miniatures  already 
described.  Recently  published  are  two  transcriptions  for 
violin  and  piano.  Op.  43,  one  of  the  melodious  June  Barca- 
rolle of  Tschaikovsky,  one  of  the  Rubinstein  Barcarolle 
in  F  minor.  As  in  the  Schubert  and  Dvoi'ak  piano  trans- 
cripts these  apportion  a  maximum  of  effect  to  the  solo 
instrument,  while  showing  artistic  versatility  in  the  han- 
dling of  the  accompanimental  harmonies.  They  give  proof 
of  the  appreciation  and  intelligence  with  which  Ornstein 
approaches  the  work  of  a  fellow  composer,  and  his  re- 
spect for  intrinsically  valid  art  manifestations  which  may 
differ  from  his  own. 

Four  Pieces  for  violin  and  piano.  Op.  55 ;  Five  Pieces 
for  'cello  and  piano.  Op.  75,  and  Andante  and  Allegro  for 
flute  and  piano.  Op.  57,  are  still  in  MS.  or  in  process  of 
gestation. 

Nor  has  Ornstein  neglected  the  song,  that  most  direct 
of  all  vehicles  for  the  presentation  of  musical  thought. 

While  still  an  East  Side  schoolboy,  he  had  already 
written  some  twenty  song  settings  of  Robert  Burns,  whose 
poetry    then    obsessed    him.      His    songs,    There    Was    a 


His    Work  87 

Jolly  Miller  Once,  and  the  Rudyard  Kipling  setting, 
Mother  o'  Mine,  both  date  from  this  period.  The  former 
has  a  melody  of  real  lyric  spontaneity,  its  "final  tranquillo 
with  its  obstinato  figure  is  the  piano  part  worthy  of  a 
young  master."  The  composer  first  sketched  it  during 
a  syntax  lesson  in  the  classroom  on  a  blank  page  of  his 
grammar,  with  one  eye  on  his  teacher  to  see  that  he  was 
not  observed.  The  Kipling  setting  is  sombre,  but  rich  in 
dramatic  feeling,  and  represents  a  fine  individual  concept 
of  a  poem  often  set. 

The  three  Lieder  (2),  Op.  33,  Wiegenliedchen  (Cradle 
Song),  In  Goldener  Fiille  (A  Vision  of  Glory)  and  Wald- 
seligkeit  (Alone  in  the  Forest),  mark  an  abrupt  transition 
from  the  manner  of  their  predecessors.  The  piano  accom- 
paniments are  orchestrally  conceived,  in  the  Cradle  Song 
in  particular,  and  the  voice  is  handled  with  an  obbligato 
effect.  The  same  poems  had  already  been  set  by  Richard 
Strauss;  yet  they  appealed  so  strongly  to  Ornstein  that 
he  felt  impelled  to  set  them  in  turn.  A  comparison  be- 
tween the  tv/o  musical  \ersions  is  somewhat  difficult  to 
establish,  since  their  composers  do  not  use  the  same  lan- 
guage. The  Strauss  songs  are  far  more  lyric  in  the  ac- 
cepted sense  of  the  word;  their  harmonic  development 
is  subordinated  to  the  movement  of  the  melodic  line. 
Ornstein  is  more  mtense,  more  preoccupied  with  revealing 
the  intimate  psychos  of  the  poetic  idea  than  with  making 
concessions  to  ideals  of  expression  which  he  does  not  find 
adequate  for  his  purpose.  His  melodies  are  incidental 
in  the  working  out  of  his  musical  concept  as  a  whole. 
As  he  himself  says:  "In  the  Strauss  Cradle  Song  you 
have  only  a  pictorial  illustration  of  a  woman  rocking  a 
cradle.  I  have  tried  to  go  below  the  surface,  to  show  the 
fears  and  hopes  for  her  child  that  fill  the  mother's  mind." 

Four  settings  of  Blake  poems,  Op.  18  (1,  Spring, 
2.   My  Silks  in  Fine  Array.     3,  Memory,  Hither  Come. 


88  Leo    Ornstein 

4.  Mad  Song),  like  the  Sonata,  Op.  31,  do  homage  to  the 
influence  of  the  Enghsh  poet-philosopher.  They  have 
never  been  published,  and  should  prove  of  interest  be- 
cause the  composer,  endeavoring  to  give  the  poems  their 
most  intimate  musical  expression,  has  tried  not  only  to 
reproduce  their  thought-content,  but  to  "strip  his  music 
of  all  artificiality,"  and  ecjual  in  tone  "Blake's  happy  fac- 
ulty of  reaching  out  unfailingly  for  the  essential  truth." 

Ornstein  has  been  devoting  more  attention  of  late  to 
the  song.  Among  the  various  songs  he  has  written  recently 
might  be  instanced  Six  Russian  Songs  to  texts  by  Pushkin, 
Op.  76 ;  a  Tartar  Lament  that  makes  a  poignant  appeal ; 
a  fervid  Arabian  Gazal  or  love  song  (dedicated  to  Reinold 
Werrenrath ) ,  and  an  expressive  melody.  She  Stoops  in 
Visions  of  the  Night.  And  a  set  of  three  Russian  cho- 
ruses for  mixed  voices,  just  completed,  might  also  be  men- 
tioned here. 

All  in  all,  these  works  of  Leo  Ornstein  represent  a 
notable  harvest  of  inspiration  to  have  been  gathered  by 
one  so  young.  Yet  youth,  intellectually  and  emotionally, 
is  sometimes  a  relative  concept — Schubert  wrote  his 
Forellen-Quintet  at  the  age  of  seventeen.  We  may  be  as 
old  as  our  feelings  or  as  young  as  our  thoughts.  Mental 
and  emotional  development  is  not  invariably  a  matter  of 
years,  and  Ornstein  is  one  of  those  exceptions  which  go 
to  prove  the  general  rule.  In  his  case  youth  lends  him 
the  fiery  energy,  the  passionate  concentration,  the  intense 
belief  in  his  aims  and  ideals  which  inform  the  musical 
maturity  of  his  inspiration  with  so  triumphant  an  accent 
of  sincerity,  so  eloquent  a  feeling  of  truth.  His  creative 
work  is  the  logical  outcome  of  his  ideas,  the  spontaneous 
fruition  of  absolute  conviction,  the  irrefutable  evidence 
of  his  artistic  honesty.  Whether  or  not  we  accept  it,  to- 
gether with  the  doctrines  of  which  it  is  the  outcome,  the 
fact  of  its  existence  as  the  true  and   legitimate  musical 


His    Work  89 

materialization  of  definite  trends  and  consistent  ideals  in 
composition  and  expression  cannot  well  be  gainsayed. 

Ornstein  possesses  in  a  supreme  degree  what  Paul 
Rosenfeld  has  called  "the  ability  to  transmute  into  art, 
by  means  of  a  powerful  and  lurid  imagination,  the  life 
of  his  time."  In  his  own  way,  according  to  the  light 
that  has  been  given  him,  the  composer  turns  emotion  into 
music — emotion,  "thought  in  a  glow,"  and  the  well-spring 
of  all  life's  activities — and  gives  it  to  the  world  as  that 
tribute  to  his  art  which  every  true  artist  owes  humanity 
at  large.  And  to  revert  to  the  words  of  the  writer  already 
quoted:*  "One  can  only  rejoice  that  he  should  already 
have  expressed  in  such  original,  powerful  and  permanent 
form  what  of  life  has  been  revealed  to  him,  and  await 
with  confidence  the  donation  his  developed  breadth  and 
poise  is  sure  of  making  us." 


•  "Ornstein,"  by  Paul  Rosenfeld.    The  New  Republic,  May  27,  1916. 


ANNOUNCEMENT 

of 

COMPOSITIONS  BY 

LEO  ORNSTEIN 

Published  by 

THE  BOSTON  MUSIC  COMPANY 

Boston 


PYGMY  SUITE  OP.  9. 
Piano  Solo 

NO.  1.  SERENADE 

"  2.  HUNTING  SONG 

"  3.  BERCEUSE 

"  4.  THE  DANCE 

"  5.  EVENING  PRAYER 

"  6.  MARCH 

"  7.  BY  THE  BROOK 

"  8.  MERRY-MAKING 


Each,  30c.      Complete,  Net,  60c. 
B.  M.  Co.  Edition  No.  324 


ANNOUNCEMENT 

o/ 

COMPOSITIONS     BY 

LEO  ORNSTEIN 

Published  by  BREITKOPF    CBi   HARTEL,  Inc. 

New   York 

PIANO   SOLO 

Burlesque  on  Richard  Strauss n  $  .75 

Arabesques     n  1-25 

Serenade,  Op.  5,  No.  I n  .50 

Scherzino,  Op.  5,  No.  II n  .50 

A  la  Chinoise n  1.25 

Moments  Musical: 

(A  concert  version  of  Schubert's  "Moments  Musical," 

Op.  51,  No.  I) n  .50 

VIOLIN   AND   PIANO 

Sonata.   Op.  26 n  1.50 

Two  Russian  Barcarolles: 

Tschaikowsky  Barcarolle  in  G  minor n  .75 

Rubinstein  Barcarolle  in  F  minor n  .75 

STRING    QUARTET 

The  Miniature  String  Quartet n     2.00 

ORCHESTRA 

(In  Preparation) 
A  la  Chinoise 

Burlesques  on  Richard  Strauss 


LEO  ORNSTEIN— The  Man,  His  Ideas,  His  Work.    By 

Frederick  H.  Martens.    Illustrated n     1.00 


ANNOUNCEMENT 

of 

COMPOSITIONS     BY 

LEO  ORNSTEIN 

Published  by  OLIVER   DITSON  COMPANY 
Boston  New  York 


A    PARIS    street"  SCENE    AT    NIGHT 


LEO    0KN5TK1H 


PIANO   SOLO 

Valse  in  G  major,  Op.  4,  No.  I Grade  IV  .50 

Sarabande,  Op.  4,  No.  II Grade  IV  .50 

A  Paris  Street  Scene  at  Night,  Op.  4,  No.  Ill   Grade  V  .50 


VIOLIN  AND  PIANO 

THREE  RUSSIAN  IMPRESSIONS 

No.  1.     Olga    Grade  III  .60 

"      2.     Natascha      Grade  III  .60 

"     3.     Sonja    Grade  IV  .75 


ANNOUNCEMENT 

o/ 

COMPOSITIONS       BY 

LEO     ORNSTEIN 

Published  by  CARL  FISCHER 

Nev^  YorK  Boston  Chicago 


PIANO    SOLO 

POEIMS     OF    1917      Cin    Preparation) 

NINE  MINIATURES 

Xo.  1.     Berceuse       No.  4.     Humoresque  No.  7.     Gavotte 

2.  Mazurka  5.     Melancolie  8.     Valse 

3.  Romance  6.     Danse    Fantastique  9.     Danse   Burlesque 

Price,  $1.25,  n.et 


voice:  and  piano 

TWO  songs- 
No.   1.    Mother  o'  Mine  No.  2.    There  Was  a  Jolly  Miller  Once 
Price  of  eacK  60c. 

THRElEl   SONGS.  Op.  33 

No.    1.     Cradle    Song  No.   2.     A   Vision    of    Glory- 

No.   3.     Alone   in   the    Forest 

Price  of  each.  75c. 
TWO   ORIENTAL   SONGS 

No.  1.     Tartar  Lament,  Russian  Song      No.  2.     Gazal,  Arab  Love  .Song 
(In    Preparation) 


CHAMBER    MUSIC 

SONATA  FOR  VIOLIN  AND   PIANO,  Op.  31 

Price,  $2.00.  net 
SONATA   FOR  'CELLO  AND   PIANO 

(In    Preparation) 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles  ,  .... 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below.    ' 


5emi-Ann.  Loan 

MAY  4- 1987 


Ht  . 


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-5 


ML410U/4M3b 


1  11  II    II  nil  III  nil  111  INI 

L  006  992  884  4 


ML 
410 

d74M36 


LIBRARY  FACILITY 


JJ A      000330 295    7 


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